


Morbid Fascination

by alicat54c



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Fusion, Gen, Inappropriate Humor, M/M, Science, Slow Burn, Tentacles, The Callback, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26005324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicat54c/pseuds/alicat54c
Summary: No more swimming in the deep, no more boring old one man scenarios; Remus could wriggle his way into the mindscape with the rest of the sides now, and he was going to make it everyone else’s problem!
Relationships: Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders
Comments: 190
Kudos: 301





	1. Chapter 1

...Ch1  
...

Remus was more excited than a colony of on-fire fire ants.

Before, Janus would always keep at least two hands busy pushing him down to the deepest depths of the Mindscape. Remus could only re-enact piranha swarms against the yellow-clad fingers flicking him back from the surface so many times before it got boring.

But now, oh now! Thomas knew who he was!

And when Thomas /really/ wanted to know something, Janus had to let him! And if there was one thing Remus was good at, it was making himself known.

No more swimming in the deep, no more boring old one man scenarios; he could wriggle his way into the mindscape with the rest of the sides now, and he was going to make it everyone else’s problem.

He spent nearly an hour perusing his bash and stab collectibles, having decided to save the more esoteric torture devices from that time Thomas went to a medieval museum for a special occasion.

But of course, one had to start with the classics on a new endeavor.

Remus grabbed his handy dandy mace and flung it over his shoulder with a whirl.  
…

Roman was just as excited to see him as Remus thought he would be. Remus had the stab wounds to prove it!

He lost his favorite mace, but the ghost curse he put on it would have Roman chucking it back into the depths of the imagination in no time at all. It was so cute how his brother put in such effort to try and get an upper hand in their games.

Why, even now, Roman was barricading the imagination’s borders against his brother. Not that it would help. He always forgot the sewers. Remus never forgot the sewers. But he would let Roman think he won, for now.

Remus had other games to distract himself.

Speaking of.

Below, Virgil puttered around the imagined copy of Thomas’s kitchen-living room open floor plan. Heavy headphones clamped tight over his ears, as he sorted through the contents of the fridge.

The headphones were new. Non-boring Virgil knew better than to let his guard down, not just because of Remus (though Remus did his best), but because of all of the terrible, horrible, skin-peelingly gruesome things that could happen to Thomas outside of his head.

Remus, being a counterpart to those utterly delightful things inside Thomas’s head, would know. He would always take the time to remind Virgil of those terrible possibilities, even going so far as to act them out for him.

Remus suppressed a giggle.

He had missed Virgil /so/ much. The little emo-that-couldn’t-get-it-up had the most piercing screams. Bonus points if Virgil’s voice gained the doubled tones of panic. Double bonus points, in fact.

Remus wondered if Virgil still kept score of how many times Remus had scared him. It would be a shame to have to start from the beginning again, because Remus never remembered to keep score. Unless you counted by stab tallies, but that was special brother bonding time.

Oh well. Maybe it would be a new game anyway, since Virgil hung out with the boring Others now.

Remus remembered Janus flicking him halfway across the imagination when Virgil first left, in an effort to stop Remus storming the fortress, kraken style, to get the anxie-tasty side back.

His right hand scratched at his ears, newly grown claws taring furrows in the cartilage. He didn’t want to think about Janus right now. He had other things to think about.

Freshly plucked eyes stared out from between his new grown fangs, swiveling against his tongue like a Beetlejuice high-definition remastering. He could pop them like grapes if he bit down. Then he could verify whether Shrek was right and eye jelly tasted good on toast. A canine teased the edges of his cornea, consideringly.

Hm... maybe later.

Virgil exited the kitchen, soda in hand, coming closer to Remus’s hiding spot.

With a cackling roar, Remus leapt out of the hall closet, excessive limbs and teeth flailing outwards.

Virgil screamed, andthe lights flickered black,complimenting Remus’s red tint. He chucked the nearest thing at hand at the monstrous nightmare, before scuttling halfway up the stairs.

The soda can beaned Remus right between the eyes, but he didn’t let that distract him from the boiling peals of laughter issuing from every spare mouth scattered across his body.

Virgil glared between the bars of the staircase railing. 

“Remus, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“Hello to you too, emo-tasty morsel~” Remus gurgled, with the mouth not currently holding his eyeballs.

“Go away!” Virgil spat out with a hiss, before straightening from his crouch to stomp the rest of the way back to his room.

Remus tilted his head, the mouths along his form pinching before chewing themselves back into his flesh.

That’s not how the old game would go! Virgil hadn’t threatened to send him into a spiral, or, most fun of all, bodily wrestled him into submission for Janus to throw back into his room.

That was-

Remus’s left hand, still sporting the extra fingers of the limbs it was re-assimilating, jittered a beat against his side.

The scattered remains of his rightmost limbs began tugging at the constricting sleeves of his suit. Absently, Remus banished the outfit, sequin by stitch, until the cloth fell to the floor in a moldy heap.

That was not how the game was supposed to be played!

Did Virgin Boy Wonder forget?

Remus elbowed a cushion, until it was properly filled with used narcotic needles, before flinging himself like a corpse across the couch.

Well, Remus would just have to remind him! It’s not like Virgil had anywhere he could escape to now. They were in the same place again! Or, at least, Remus could get to the same place he was…

He rolled around onto his back, skin leaving multicolored stains against the upholstery in his wake. Remus stretched against the couch, propping his splayed feet over the arm rests. A number of springs began to poke his back.

He heard the telltale footsteps of a new side walking into the kitchen, the cheerful hum identifying him as everyone’s favorite father figure fig-newton.

A wide smile sliced itself over his cheeks. Well, there was something to cheer him up!

“Hey there Daddy-o. Come here often?”

Patton startled, gaze barely landing on Remus’s nude form, before he spun around again, face ablaze.

“Oh, uh, hi there, uh, R-remus!” Patton’s eyes darted faster than minnows, mapping the ceiling’s every crack. “I- I didn’t expect you to be here!”

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our main weapons are surprise, and a snappy dress sense.” He punctuated the statement with a sharp slap to his own flank.

“Uh, r-right…”

It was like he’d never seen a dick before. Was Morality like a Ken doll down there? You would think he would want a bit of action to spice up his sorry, dick-less life. Not like Remus would say no. He’s never gotten a chance to try out Daddy kink shaming, after all.

Hm, what would that be like? There were definitely a few toys in his medieval torture collection he could use to test the idea…

Remus flickered from the couch to his room in a blink, wide grin stretching across his face.  
…

Several rounds of hypotheticals later, Remus chewed on a live oyster, savoring the salmonella.

Mace, monsters, nudity. Hm, what next?

Remus picked at his teeth thoughtfully, before throwing the oyster fragment back onto his lounging pile. He hocked a pearl into the swine pen, as his toes tried to find out how high they could bounce before the bed of nails finally broke skin. The points would need sharpening again later. Trying to break through to bone always made them dull.

“Eh, guess I can always do a classic jump and scare. It’s not assault if you scream surprise!”

His left hand fingers picked at his mustache.

“You’re right lefty, we can do better than that!”

His other hand reached behind his head to tug at the collar of his suit.

“You’re left righty! That’s a fantastic way to spice things up!”

Leaping to his feet, and ignoring the new rusty slices along his thighs, Remus cracked his spine first one way then the other. The tissue along his ribs contracted, pulling and twisting in three fold harmony to accommodate a hydrostatic musculature. With a blood curdling shriek, Remus hunched over, as eight green octopus arms, three times longer than he was tall, erupted from his back.

They immediately began tangling around their owner, like seaweed caught in a rip tide.

“Hello babies! Daddy missed you too!” he crowed with a cackle, human arms wrapping and wrapping and wrapping round his own body in disjointed mimicry of their boneless fellows.

One began to creep around Remus’s throat, but he cut it off with a tut. “Not just yet, pretty, Daddy’s got a new game for us.”

The tentacles did not seem to pay any mind, as they continued to constrict to the point where blood flow was a distant tingling memory.

Remus hummed, giddy bubbles erupting from his chest like rabies froth, as he continued to hold himself. “We’re going nerd hunting!”  
…

Remus snuck into the others’ spaces all the time, whether it was to leave a nightmare in Virgil’s closet, or steal a much loved memory from Patton to twist into a terrifying scenario. Janus would always catch him before he could have any /real/ fun with the other sides, the spoil-sport. However, the path to Logan’s room was well worn. Remus had eaten his fair share of books from the nerd’s collection. The damage always repaired itself eventually, but the nightmare fuel of facts was usually enough to keep Remus entertained for a few days.

In the space between the floor and bedframe in Logic’s room, a pair of red eyes glowed. They twisted in ways that circles shouldn’t to peer out at the room’s only other inhabitant. Seated at his desk with the lamp on, Logan wrote feverishly in a three-ringed binder.

The eyes pouted.

No fair, Facts-n-Snacks was supposed to be asleep! Oh well, guess it was time to see if his sneaking skills worked on Logic.

Remus eased himself out from under the bed. The eight arms at his back oozed across the floor in an arc, zeroing in on the figure hunched over his desk.

Reality took a side step, like a TV fuzzing out to a red tinged landscape.

The scratching of a pen against paper paused.

Remus struck.

All eight arms rose from the floor. One each wrapped around Logan’s arms, while the other six made quick work of binding his legs and torso together.

“HA! got you, nerd by night!” Remus sprang to his feet, extra bounce in his step jostling the tentacles which sprouted from his back.

Using his arms, he turned the chair and prisoner around to face him. He tilted his head, taking in the red rimmed eyes under glasses, which did not seem to be a fashion choice akin to Remus’s.

“You look like death warmed over, and I’ve barbecued roadkill enough to know!”

Logan’s glare seemed unfocused, darting to take in each restrained limb, before settling on the grinning face of his captor.

“Remus. May I ask what you are doing in my room?”

“You may~.” Remus wiggled his eyebrows independently of one another. His insinuations were wasted, as Logan simply nodded.

“Very well. What are you doing in my room?”

Remus sighed like a death rattle. “Geeze Tin Man, it’s no fun messing with you if you don’t react.”

Were his arms not constrained, Logan would have reached up to adjust his glasses. “Ah, I see. So this was a ‘prank’.”

“Eh, sorta. I’ll just have to try harder next time to get ya’.” Remus wiggled his fingers, and the arms writhed with the movement against Logan’s skin.

Instead of struggling against the slimy hold like Janus would have, or biting his way free like Virgil, Logan stilled.

Through the extra arms, Remus could feel how the tightly held muscles of Logan’s back twitched and relaxed with each movement.

Weird. Oh well, easier to keep a hold of prey that’s not struggling.

Drawing closer, Remus flicked a nail-chewed finger against Logan’s forehead. “Thomas is way past brain juice fixing time, nerd-REM. Me and Roman are the only ones supposed to be awake right now.”

“I was taking the opportunity to get a figurative ‘jump start’ on the tasks Thomas must complete when he wakes up. As a metaphysical human being, I do not require long periods of rest.”

Remus rolled his eyes so hard that they rattled against the back of his skull, and pinballed into his weeping sockets. “Now we both know that’s not true, Log-in-somnia.”

He whirled the bound side, filed teeth flashing, as the chair spun his arms tighter around their prey. “Did you know that parasites can work their way into your brain and eat your ability to sleep, until you die of exhaustion? Maybe Thomas has that right now! Would we even know if it was eating us?”

Shaking off dizziness, Logan frowned. “I believe you must be referring to the disease known as kuru, which is a prions disease, not a parasite. It is unlikely that Thomas has acquired this disease, as both you and Roman have not noticed any concerning changes, being intrinsically tied to REM sleep cycles, as opposed to my own similar connection to the nREM cycle-“

“Yeah, nerd-REM.”

He shut his mouth, lips pressing thinly. The arms constricting his limbs pulsed eight separate squeezing beats, and Remus watched as the line of tension at his jaw relaxed.

Logan cleared his throat. “You cannot simply hold me here all night, Remus. As you said, you also have a job you must be doing.”

“Challenge accepted!” Remus wiggled his eyebrows. “Besides, Roman thinks he locked me out tonight, and I wanna build the tension before I jump out and stab him in the back.”

Two tentacles partially unwrapped their prey, in order to anchor to the floor and ceiling. Stupid Logic’s room, making the laws of physics more than mere suggestions. Stupid non-ocean environment, making his tentacles less effective at moving around.

Remus used the leverage to hoist Logan from his desk chair and onto his bed. The side hardly bounced. A hard mattress probably kept that stick up Logan’s butt from snapping, piercing his organs, and causing him to die horribly from sepsis.

Sniggering, Remus flopped into the now unoccupied chair, soggy boots scattering the stacks of papers on the desktop to the floor. He leaned against the perfectly calibrated lumbar support, head craning back.

On the bed, arm number five wrenched the pillow out from under the comforter, and pressed it against Logan’s mouth and nose. Before the side could become completely smothered, tentacle four snaked itself under Logan’s head and lifted, so number three could place the pillow underneath. Two, always the most cognizant of things breaking, oozed a line of slime across Logan’s face to pluck his glasses away, before flinging them to the floor. Number six took umbrage, and flipped the whole mess of body and tentacles, so Logan was face down on the pillow.

“Is there any way I can convince you to desist?” Logan said, voice muffled from where his face pressed against the mattress.

“Nope!” Remus sang, lips popping.

“Very well.”

Seven started prodding at Logan’s bicep, while eight twined itself between Logan’s fingers. Remus blinked, when the faint sensation of those fingers tightening reached him past the flood of sensations from his excess of limbs.

He kicked the corner of Logan’s desk. The chair tried to go spinning, making his tentacles strain thin against the momentum, before springing back like elastic, sending the chair bouncing in the opposite direction.

Logan sighed deeply from within the confines of his prison. The arms tightened to compensate, so the limp figure could not wriggle free.

Remus giggled, kick taking up a rhythm, as he ping-ponged first one way from the kick, then the other from his tentacles snapping back.

Hm, bored now.

Remus stood up, his excess of limbs untying from their prey to drape across his shoulders. All except one. He tugged, but the wayward tentacle remained unmoved.

Frowning, he turned back to the bed, trying to see what was keeping lucky number eight.

Logan’s hand was clamped tightly around the eighth arm, grip tightening to follow each attempt of the limb to shrink and squeeze away.

Remus’s eyes blinked disjointedly.

Well, nothing for it! Summoning a rusty meat cleaver, Remus brought it down on the arm with more finesse than the dull edge would imply.

Logan’s breathing didn’t waver, as the side cuddled the now disembodied limb to his chest.

Remus tilted his head, noting how the touch sensation from the arm was dulled, but still there. He wondered if the rest of his limbs would do that. If he cut off his head, would he be feeling his body as faint, or his head as faint?

If he showed his severed head to Patton, would he faint?

Welp- only one way to find out. Remus sunk down into his room, already cataloguing his collection of sharp and pointies for the perfect experimental partner.

Now alone, the green tentacle looped the part of itself not being gripped around the side’s wrist, suckers biting deeply enough to leave circular bruises. Logan sighed, curling tighter into himself on top of the covers.  
...


	2. Chapter 2

…ch2  
…

Logan was reorganizing Thomas’s knowledge of color theory, when he felt the tell-tale pull of being summoned. Placing the last metaphysical volume on its shelf, he straightened his necktie, before rising into his customary spot in Thomas’s living room.

Patton spared him a small smile from his customary spot by the blinds, while Roman and Virgil continued to glare at each other. Their dispute kept Thomas from acknowledging his arrival.

Logan cleared his throat.

“What seems to be the trouble?” he said, as past data had correlated his welcomed presence around Thomas and his other sides with a pressing dilemma they required his expertise to solve.

On cue, Roman whirled to face him, hands in the air. “Logan, I was just telling Virgil that-“

Roman’s eyes widened a fraction, taking in, seemingly for the first time, Logan’s appearance. His mouth stretched in a grimace, hands coming down to point dramatically at Logan’s person.

“Sweet Hera’s Tiara, what is that on your arm?” Roman screamed.

Logan blinked and looked down, to examine the green writhing tentacle wrapped just below his watch. It wriggled at the movement, suckers tickling along his skin as it redoubled its grip.

“Oh,” he said, putting his arm back down. “It is no cause for concern. May I ask why I have been summoned?”

Patton cringed, unable to recede further due to the blinds at his back. “Uh, kiddo, I don’t mean to disagree, but-“

“Did the Duke do something to you?” Virgil cut in. Logan looked over. The metaphysical representation of anxiety had his shoulders pulled up near his shoulders, while his fingers clenched whitely against his knees. His glare never left Logan’s passenger.

“He was creeping around last night,” Virgil continued. “Did he get into your room or something?”

“Oh, that explains the weird dreams,” Thomas muttered, under his breath.

Logan adjusted his glasses with his unoccupied hand. “I assure you, Remus has not caused me any permanent distress or harm. Now, may we return to the topic of-“

“You can’t call /that/ unharmed!” Roman squealed, flapping his hands, feet dancing, as if he were a housewife with a mouse scurrying at his ankles.

Logan looked back down at his arm. The thinnest portion of the tentacle curled and uncurled in a facsimile of a wave. He returned to the conversation, single brow raised.

“It has summarily refused to release me. However, I do not find it bothersome. Being one of Remus’s creations, any method to forcibly repress or remove it will most likely prove to be useless, and cause undue harm to parties involved.”

The tentacle wriggled, as if in response, which was ridiculous, as it did not possess any mode of hearing, to Logan’s knowledge. Each sucker detached, worming around for new purchase, eliciting an audible pop, as the coating of slime created suction against Logan’s skin.

“Oh that’s so gross,” Thomas gagged. “I didn’t think it could get worse than the stretchy arms-“

Logan sighed. “I see that my presence here has proved more of a distraction than a solution. I will attempt to rectify the situation before returning.”

He sank out.

…

The sides did not have ‘rooms’ in the strictest sense of the word. Each had a layer of focus and thought they represented, which overlapped like a color spectrum to create the pure white light of a single being, namely, Thomas. However, due to Thomas being a highly visual individual, the ways the sides interacted with each other and their ‘rooms’ had an equally visual representation.

So, instead of Logan’s room being a fluctuation of metaphorical blue light amid pulsing neurons of thought, it held the appearance of a small living space, with shelves upon shelves of accumulated knowledge stretching into the distance. And instead of that metaphorical blue light bleeding into the green spectrum, Logan found himself walking down a hallway, which ended in a vibrant green door.

Logan knocked, and waited. One hand cradled the tentacle wrapped around his arm, as if its tight grip would loosen, causing it to fall, despite it not having let him go in over twenty hours.

“Remus? I am here to speak to you.”

The door opened slowly, creaking with far more hinges than the design indicated the door possessed. Skeletal fingers oozed along the doorframe, widening the crack to expose several sets of too wide, too sharp teeth.

Then, with a bang that ricocheted off the back wall, the door flung open. Remus leaned against the door frame, hip cocked.

“Fancy seeing you here, Ahab!” His eyes skittered like spiders up and down Logan’s frame. “I wasn’t expecting any visitors to my door! Then, I usually don’t expect any visitors to use my door, since I don’t. Much more fun to jump out from under the bed! It’s where all the best monsters hide.” His eyes danced. “And porn stashes!”

Logan filed the information. “If you are otherwise occupied, I can return later.”

“I’m never too busy for a quickie, smartie panties.” Remus’s red eyes met his and held. “What do you want?”

Logan held out the arm, around which the octopus limb was still wrapped.

“Lucky!” Remus cooed, eyes snapping down, before fixing once more on Logan’s own. “I hope it caused you lots of trouble~.”

“It was no trouble.” Logan reassured, adjusting his glasses with his unoccupied hand. “However, Thomas and the others expressed concern as to its presence. I felt it most prudent to return it in order to prevent any further discomfort on their part in the future.”

Remus blew a raspberry. “Give ‘em one severed limb, and they turn into headless unicorns. Hm, I wonder if a headless unicorn would run around like a chicken? I guess if you moved the nerve endings around a bit…”

“Removing it now would be most convenient,” Logan added, pulling the side from his mutterings.

Remus refocused on him. “I dunno, Lucky seems quite attached to you.”

“It is not an inconvenient companion.”

“You can always come back, if you get lonely.” Remus wiggled his eyebrows, voice lowering in tone. Logan wondered how long the side could go without blinking, as he had yet to during the course of the entire discussion. “I know we would just ~love~ to have you stop by for a visit!”

The tentacle wriggled around his arm, possibly due to the close proximity of its owner. Logan adjusted his grip, fingers trailing over the sheen of mucus.

“Thank you, I might. I am interested in how you are able to keep a limb which has been detached from the larger nervous system active in this manner. It brings to mind the foundational studies of John Zachary Young, and his work with the squid axion nerve.”

“Looking to animate some dead bodies of your own, Franken-nerd?” He leaned further out of the doorway, eyes still figuratively boring into Logan’s own. “If you’re interested, I got a whole graveyard of zombies and a chainsaw we could play with?”

Logan considered the offer. “Surely a scalpel would provide a higher degree of dexterity needed to operate on a corpse?”

“Ooo~ I love playing doctor!”

“I also find medical research quite stimulating.” Logan adjusted his glasses. “However, I would prefer that higher priority tasks be completed first.”

Remus held out his hand, corners of his mouth twisting, eyes alight with delight. “All right, give it here.”

Logan looked down at his passenger, breaking the prolonged eye contact. He attempted to loosen the tentacle’s grip, by sliding his fingers under the thickest part. When that failed, he moved to un-twine the thinnest end from around his wrist. The tiny suckers came loose for a moment, before wrapping around the fingers of his other hand.

A frown ticked the corner of Logan’s mouth. “I apologize, I appear to be tied up.”

Remus sniggered. “Ooo~, if that’s what you’re into, Come into my room, I got something that can help with that~”

“That would be most helpful, thank you,” Logan said, taking the invitation to step past the Duke into his domain.

Remus blinked disjointedly, pulling back from the doorway, as if taking care not to touch his new guest. “Er, right. Come in, I guess.”

“I have already entered,” Logan confirmed, peering around.

Whereas his own room maintained the orderly quality of a library study room Thomas has used copiously during his college years, Remus’s had a much more organic quality.

The primary odor of the space was decayed seaweed, interspersed with the sharp microbial decay of sulfur. Overlaying that was the unique scent of rot, which accompanied Remus like a figurative cloud wherever he went. Logan wrinkled his nose. However, such scents were meant to repel one from encountering things which might carry disease. As Logan and Remus were imaginary, and therefore unable to be affected by lasting disease and injury, Logan was easily able to categorize the sensation as innocuous background experience.

Various items, grouped in a manner indecipherable to Logan, drifted across the floor, as if caught in a tide. A mass of what at first glance appeared to be bones wrapped in intestinal lining struck his shin, as he strode into the room, and ricocheted away.

“That’s what he said,” Remus sniggered, shutting the door behind him.

The brighter illumination of the hall now gone, the quality of light gained the smog drenched twilight of a sewer system in a noir film.

“Bold of you to step into my lair, Lobe-in-Wonderland!” Remus’s voice gained a hollow gurgling quality, as he stalked closer.

His fingers skittered less than a millimeter above Logan’s fabric clad shoulders. Logan felt the hairs along the back of his neck raise, but as the pilomat response was only due to the presence of Remus, and not any substantial threat, he pushed the sensation away as irrelevant.

He turned his head to meet Remus’s luminescent red gaze. “What are you going to do with the tentacle, onceit has been removed from my person?”

“What, Lucky?

“Yes.” Logan’s hand moved to rest on the tentacle’s moist skin. It petted his palm, tiny suckers tickling the spaces between his fingers.

Remus shrugged. “I’ll probably eat it.” He clacked his teeth and inch from Logan’s cheek. “They like to wiggle all the way down, you know~.”

Logan hummed. “Ah, I take it that instinct is due to your own cephalopod like inclinations?”

He cocked an eyebrow, lips cracking in not quite a grin to show filed teeth. “If auto-cannibal calamari is whatever you just said, then, yeah, sure.”

Logan considered this. “If it will be of no detriment to your wellbeing in any way, instead of consumption, might I suggest putting ‘Lucky’, as you called it, in an enclosure? Observations as to its continued health, despite being severed from its main body, can then be made.”

“What, you wanna come visit and say hello to it?”

Logan blinked. “You said that I could, did you not?”

Now Remus blinked, first one eye then the other. “Well, you got me there.”

“I do not understand, I do not have you anywhere. You are here under your own power.”

“Er, right.” Pulling back, Remus scanned the piles of refuse scattered around him. “Hm, I think I’ve got a cage around here somewhere…Gimme a minute.”

Logan began to count backwards from sixty.

Remus turned to wade through the mess of miscellaneous items cluttering the floor and walls. Occasionally, he seemed to forget which version of physics he was using, as he would mutter out a string of bubbles, which grew in size as they floated towards the ceiling. He would walk up a wall, only to let himself go at its zenith, and float back to the floor, costume billowing as if through water.

Upon reaching negative one, Logan ceased his counting. “Did you know that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is primarily composed of plastic fishnets?”

Remus paused his digging to look up. “What?”

Logan gestured around the flotsam of his room. “Is that not the model you were using to manifest your domain?”

“Gee, I knew my room was a flaming pile of garbage, but you didn’t have to go out and say it!” From Remus’s tone, Logan surmised that he was speaking in humor.

“I see no fire of any sort here. In fact, the ‘piles of garbage’, as you say, appear to be quite wet.”

“That’s what he said!” Remus sniggered, tossing aside what appeared to be a barnacle encrusted human femur.

Logan adjusted his glasses. “Um, yes. That is what I said. Are you having trouble hearing me?”

Remus hummed, having returned to his digging. He righted what appeared to be a massive hourglass full of angular black sand. Instead of a central pinching of glass, a golden human skull, with its mouth wide open spanned the interior. As Logan watched, a glob of black sand rose from the glass’s bottom, only to be chomped between the skull’s teeth, and added to the mass in the bulb’s top.

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like to eat trash until you died? And then they cut you open, and all that’s inside are undigested cigarette butts and bottle caps?” Remus said, suddenly.

“No,” said Logan. “Though I’m sure the circumstances by which you would be compelled to consume that much indigestible matter would be unlikely.”

“Yeah.” The hourglass fell back into the flotsam with a crash. A wave of many legged skittering…creatures Logan could not immediately identify, from what crustacean like construction he was able to see, dashed out from the point of impact. A few made it as far as Logan’s feet, before vanishing under the door, out into the hallway. The nearest pile of refuse shuddered precariously at their passing.

A thumb sized jar, with a decaying cork in the top, began to shudder from its perch atop the pile. At first Logan assumed the movement to be due to the previously mentioned skittery creatures. However, upon closer inspection, the jar contained a viscous green ooze that rioted against the sides of the glass.

“Is that a slime mold?”

Remus surfaced from a swampy patch of mildewy socks. He squinted as rivulets of noxious fluid poured down his face. “Oh that? I made it after Thomas forgot to clean his shower for a week. It eats feet!”

“Fascinating.” The mold slammed against the side of the glass again, causing the entire bottle to lean precariously. “May I keep it for study?”

Remus shrugged. “Yeah, sure. There’s another one growing in my room… hm, somewhere.”

“You have my thanks,” Logan said. Reaching out, he caught the jar before it could fall, and placed it in his pants pocket.

A giddy stream of books to reference played themselves through his mind. “Did you know that slime molds are single celled organisms that have no brain? They can combine with other single celled amoeba to form large masses in order to survive circumstances of prolonged starvation. They then form spores, that can spread for miles-“

Logan cut himself off. “I apologize. I am told that my figurative ‘info dumping’ can cause others to become bored.”

“You kidding? I’m gonna make Thomas think about this /all week/!” His shoulders wiggled, like a predator ready to pounce. “Usually I have to chew through a few books in your room, before I find something so /fun/ to play with!”

Logan blinked. “You read the books in my room?”

“Oh course I do, book nerd! You’re the only one in this mind palace with working schematics for thumb screws!”

Logan adjusted his glasses. “Ah yes, the museum’s medieval torture exhibit. I had wondered why the metaphysical manifestation of those books required regenerating more frequently.”

Remus grinned, grimy bits of long forgotten paper shreds glinting between his shark teeth. “The appendix tastes the most delicious, because it’s named like an organ!” He dove down again.

“Fascinating.” Logan watched the tunneling rustles and eerie hints of movement that marked Remus’s progression across the floor. “As an embodiment of creativity, do you often experience synesthesia due to word association?”

Remus lurched to the surface once more, spitting out a feathery mass. “Ugg, this tastes purple.” He licked his lips. “And toxic! Must be Brittany.” His head turned on its axis to face Logan. “What were you saying Ursu-lo-gan?”

“I believe I have gathered data to support my hypothesis, without needing a direct answer from you.”

“Whatever.” Remus dusted off his hands, only spreading the layer of grime normally accompanying him more thoroughly across his skin.

“Where do they go?” Logan asked, eyeing the last of the skittery things vanish into the mouse hole cracks of Remus’s room.

Remus shrugged, pawing at a sticky patch of something on the side of a crusty plate, which snapped back, with a variety of teeth. “Dunno. Probably into the imagination. Though I can sometimes hear Roman screaming when the ideas escape, so I think some might get into his room too.”

“Fascinating.”

Remus dropped the plate, who’s inhabitant had begun chewing on his sleeves. “This is getting boring. Lucky can fend for itself in the wild just like the rest of them.”

Stalking back to his guest, Remus pulled out a chainsaw. “All right, hold out your arm. Do you like your shoulder or elbow better?”

Logan paused his petting of the tentacle. “I do believe there are several less drastic options we can pursue, before resorting to amputation.”

The creative side snorted. “Fine, be boring!” He tossed the chainsaw away--it landed with a splat--and snapped his fingers.

Nothing happened.

Remus flicked his wrist.

The tentacle still didn’t budge. He glowered, and snapped his fingers again, sharply.

Glaring at his own digits, Remus huffed. “Huh, must have performance anxiety.”

“Perhaps if it were moved to a habitat it found more suitable? Animal behavioral research suggests a creature is more willing to move into an environment it finds pleasing,” Logan suggested. “I was unsure whether it required water, but perhaps you could create a small body to test it?”

“Lucky can rip apart a regular sized body, not a small one.” Remus waved his hand. “No um.” He waved his hand more frantically. “It won’t- um. I’m going to have to-“

Like ripping off a bandaid, Remus’s hand darted out to snatch Logan’s wrist. His skin felt cool and clammy, like a corpse under the waves. Nails bitten down to the cuticle elongated into ragged claws, which teased the edges of the tentacle, scraping and tickling. It wriggled, in a body movement almost like a giggle. Logan felt it loosen from around his arm more and more, until it fell to the floor with a gluttonous slap.

Remus cheered, one booted foot swinging out to punt the tentacle far into the piles of garbage. “Goal! Ha! That’ll teach you to not listen to me, even if you are a part of me! Only I can not listen to me! I’m the head tentacle in this house!”

Logan’s attention was fixed on the point of contact where Remus’s fingers still gripped his wrist. The circular bruises left by the overzealous tentacle’s suckers twinged under the white knuckled grip. He could feel his heartbeat where flesh pressed to bone, could feel Remus’s own lack of an anatomically correct circulatory system, feel-

Logan looked up with a start. “I apologize for my inattention. Please repeat what you said.”

Remus’s head tilted to the side, like a doberman with an earache. Inflamed eustachian tubes clogged, allowing a buildup of fluids and bacterial growth, which could severely damage tympanic membranes and impair hearing. Can be caused by contaminated water entering the ears-

“You good there, Down-lo-gan. You’re looking a bit green around the gills. I didn’t know you had gills! They new?”

Logan’s hand flew to his throat, and sure enough two indentations along the side of his neck met his fingers. Tissues parting, arteries re-arranging to allow the diffusion of oxygen filled water to come into contact with carbon dioxide filled blood for gas exchange, and the continuation of respiration. Mitochondrion burning like tiny fires inside of cells, controlled combustion of oxygen, like being lit slowly on fire, until the fire became too much, consuming telemeric tails to extinction, and the cell died in a cannibalistic blaze.

“Ah.” He blinked rapidly, dispelling the rush of information racing through his mind. “I believe your room is corrupting me.”

“Neat!” Remus’s eyes were feverish. “Think you’ll turn into the creature from the black lagoon? There are some great spots near the subconscious we can go diving, very big and abyssal-“

“Space is bigger,” Logan cut in.

If anything Remus’s grin doubled in size. It definitely doubled in teeth.

Logan cleared his throat, tongue feeling dry. “Now that we have solved the problem I came here to, I believe I should leave, before the effects of your room become more of a hindrance.”

Remus shrugged, skating the short distance over encrusted slime to open up the door. Logan followed, with more difficulty. His breathing became labored, as if a pillow were being pressed over his nose and mouth. He barely made it past the threshold, when the feeling passed, and he took a great gulp of air.

Logan turned back to, possibly, thank Remus for his hospitality.

Remus leaned against the splintery doorway. His eye twinkled in the blindingly bright hall light, like faceted blood diamonds. “Later loser!”

The door slammed before Logan could make a reply.  
…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …  
> A/N:
> 
> Thanks to Goldie and Droid for beta reading my questionable grammar.


	3. Chapter 3

…  
…Ch3  
…

Remus had a tentative grasp of linear events at the best of times, like a goldfish bumping against the insides of a sausage case. His awareness would bob like a bucket decaying into micro-plastics on the waves, catching a snippet of conversation here, a stray thought there, only to swoop in with a comment or a cackle that would drive Thomas to distraction.

Now, he lounged against a pile of used needles in the spaces between his room and the rest of Thomas’s mind, eyes half closed as he dozed.

Above, Thomas watched his other sides discuss some boring idea or other, while he doodled on a notepad. The TV played another rerun of Parks and Rec, while the various figments made commentary. It was like watching the most drab movie imaginable. Remus yawned, pillowing his cheek on his fist.

“Thomas, I had a fantastic idea for a story!” Roman crowed, turning to face the others, from where he was seated on the floor.

Thomas looked up from his perch on the couch, pen stilling from where it was filling in the dark side of a yin-yang. “Oh, yeah?”

Roman threw out a hand. “There’s a witch who casts a spell on a beautiful prince, where instead of being put to sleep forever, the spell consumes his ability to sleep! Only the one who can see through all his beastly crankiness and give him true love’s kiss can break the spell! And of course there’s a time limit, shown by a gilded hour glass, where the sands run backwards through time!”

“That… bears a strong resemblance to the disease known as kuru.” Logan adjusted his glasses, sitting stiff backed on the rightmost couch segment. Heh, nerd. “May I ask how you came up with the idea, Roman?”

The prince posed dramatically, one hand in the air. “As with all great artists, my ideas came to me in a flash! As if the muses themselves descended from Mount Olympus to whisper, sweet melodies into my ear~!” Then he trailed off, gazing off into the distance, as conjured music began to issue from his corner.

Remus lurched to the surface, like a kraken ready to give a ship the last hug of its life. He pulled himself over the back of the rightmost segment of the couch, like that girl from The Ring pulling herself out of a television.

“Oh, yes~! You know what other things you can just stick in your ear-“

His breath caused the hairs along the back of Logan’s head to move.

“Ew ew ew, no!” Thomas chanted, flinching away, notepad slipping from his lap.

Virgil growled and hissed from his perch on the couch back, hackles raised. Beside him, sitting much more boringly, Patton grimaced.

Logan adjusted his glasses again, head turning to meet the eyes of the face hanging over his shoulder. “Hello Remus. May I ask why you are here?”

Remus’s grin ratcheted up a notch, like a DC victim going into rigor mortis from Joker’s laughing gas. “Do I ever need a reason to pop up like an unexpected boner? I’m the opposite of rational!”

Logan hummed, as if about to disagree, but was cut off.

“Oh, kay, I think we’ve had enough of that!” Patton said, expression like a constipated giraffe.

“Yeah, get out of here you!“ Roman ordered, with the gravity of a monarch declaring the death of millions in a deadly war. “No more headless horse-ing around!”

Remus’s head snaked to face his brother’s with a neck cracking snap. “Careful brother, you don’t want Thomas to get all upset and lose his head!”

Virgil’s fists were clutched close to his face as he counted his breaths like a man trapped in a sinking submarine, vividly aware of the dwindling air supply.

“Hi Remus,” Thomas said, brows pinched together. He reached down to retrieve his notepad from where it had fallen. Snatching the remote up from the floor as well, he turned up the volume, as if to deafen himself from the intrusive thoughts. “How long do you think you’ll be staying this time?”

“He is /not/ staying!” Virgil growled, eyes wild, as his breathing exercises faltered.

Logan narrowed his eyes, turning to face the other sides. “Remus is not actively causing harm or disturbance, as Thomas is not in a position where distraction would cause any problems. I do not see why he must be summarily banished.”

Everyone, Thomas and all his present sides, paused. Virgil stared at Logan incredulously, while Roman grimaced. Patton’s lips pressed together, no doubt trying to hold back his instinctive dislike of ‘icky thoughts’. Thomas himself was doing his utmost to focus on the scripted comedy routine taking place on the screen, ignoring his inner monologue to the best of his ability.

Logan continued. “As I have stated before, one cannot get rid of intrusive thoughts. They must simply run their course. Expending energy to berate Remus for his presence is less productive than simply letting him remain here with us until he decides to go elsewhere.”

Remus leaned further over the back of the couch, until the lace and ruffles of his outfit brushed against Logan’s boring black polo. “Gee Log-ick, if you wanted me around that badly, you could have just said so!”

“Your occurrence in the mindscape is unpredictable,” Logan said, watching out of the corner of his eye. “So it seems unlikely that requesting your presence would be effective, should one wish for it.”

Remus squinted at him. What was that supposed to mean? No one ever /wanted/ him around. No one ever /asked/ for him to be anywhere! He showed up wherever and whenever he wanted, not where other people wanted! No one ‘wished’ for his presence!

Unless Logan was? But why would Nerd-lo-gain want him?

“I bet you hate that~ The opposite of Logic!” Remus said, eyes boring into the side of Logan’s temple.

“On the contrary, unpredictable variables in a model only need more data to be understood. Simply because the ‘method to the madness,’ as it were, is unpredictable to an observer, does not mean that there is no series of events leading up to the occurrence. While the universe itself is a vast unpredictable void of random chance, you, like all of us, are a part of Thomas. Therefore, you exist within the realm of the human mind and can be understood with significant observation.”

Remus’s head tilted so far it made his ear parallel to the floor, red eyes unmoving as if they could bore like bot flies into Logan’s skin.

While anyone trying to predict his behavior was insulting enough to make Remus want to drive a pike through their ears, Logan didn’t say that he wanted Remus to stop what he was doing. He didn’t say he wanted to understand to better tell Remus to go away. He just wanted to understand.

Logan wanted to…understand him?

Hot sparks shot through Remus’s chest like shrapnel on the battlefield.

What was Logie-boy playing at? Why would he /want/…him?

Remus stared, left eye blinking then his right, and back again, as the metaphysical mass of fatty tissue beat the rat on the hamster wheel into rolling out an answer.

Oh.

/Oh!/

It’s a new /game/!

Logan wanted to /play/ a /game/!

He /wanted/ Remus to play! With him! No one had ever started a game with Remus before! Usually Remus had to stalk playmates through the mindscape, sink his teeth into the soft spot where their skull met their spine, and drag them into the trees where escape was impossible, to get them to play with him.

But Lo-Lo wanted him.

The shrapnel struck bone, reverberating through the marrow, echoing out again back through his meat shell and skin, till Remus was vibrating.

Remus had never played a game from someone else before!

How fun!

On the TV screen, the Parks and Rec cast exclaimed over the death of a horse, playing a concert to honor his passing, while the stoic manly man played a solo on the saxophone.

“Did you know that horse legs are actually really long fingers? They snap like toothpicks!” Remus piped up, like the stabbing blast of a weenie whistle.

Thomas shuddered, curling his own fingers into his chest. “Oh, you’re still here. Great.”

Roman grumbled in agreement, eyes narrowing at the screen. Virgil hunched into himself, breath steadying into breathing exercises to stave off panic.

“Oh, yes, it is quite fascinating!” Logan added, turning from the television to the novel source of interest. “The prehistoric ancestor of the modern horse had four ‘toes’, but as time went on, three of the toes receded, leaving the modern horse to walk on only one ‘toe’ bone, which is the hoof of the horse.”

Remus leered down at him, eyes alight with mania. “Well, you know what they say about guys with big toes~”

“No, I do not. However, one could surmise that they have adequate bone structure to support such metatarsals, or at the very least, a competent podiatrist.”

“Oh, I’m sure their foot doctor can help them rub one out-“

“Let’s talk about something else!” Patton said, with saccharine cheer. He craned his neck to look up from his place on the floor. “Thomas, have you bought that new candy bowl for the trick-or-treaters this year?”

“Oh, right, I should get on that.” Thomas paused the TV, and fetched his laptop from the kitchen table, as if a flock of hell-bats had been set on his heels.

“Logan, what theme should our costumes be this year?” Roman said, drawing the logical side from his brother’s conversation. “I was thinking we could go full on super hero! The four of us as the Incredibles, the true Disney family heroes! What do you think?”

Remus sunk his chin to rest against the back of the couch, corners of his lips pinching as his brother stole Logan’s attention away. His fingers skated a hair’s breadth from the back of Logan’s neck, before the nerd leaned forward, utterly engaged in the problem presented to him. Remus glowered at his brother. Cheater.

“Would not the most recent Marvel movie cast be more appropriate, as it holds to your fondness for disney themes, while granting a wider variety of elaborate costumes?”

“Ah, but you know I’m a sucker for fam-ILY themed costumes, Logan!” Patton said, eyes crinkling as he smiled.

“I suppose,” Logan said, straightening his spine. “However, Patton, you must attend to our plans this year, so as not to repeat last year’s costume mishap.”

“To be fair, I contributed significantly to that,” Virgil said blandly, giving a mock salute from the back of the couch.

“No, you actually stuck to the theme-“

Thomas returned to the couch, cutting off the sides' discussion. He opened his laptop, and began scrolling through a search page of halloween decorations.

“Aw, look at the little skele-dogs!” Patton cooed, craning his neck to glance at the screen.

Virgil, having uncurled himself from his breathing exercises, leaned from his perch on the back of the couch, like a bedraggled purple plaid vulture. “Nightmare Before Christmas is where it’s at. I say we do the whole house in glow-in-the-dark animal bones.”

Logan adjusted his glasses, brows furrowing slightly. “Perpetuating the spread of inaccurate skeletal models should not be encouraged, especially to young children-“

“Can it, Candy Grinch, it’s just decorations! No one expects them to be accurate.” Roman peered at the screen. “Oh, look here, skeleton spiders!”

Remus sunk lower, fingers digging into the couch’s stuffing, as he glowered at his brother.

Logan adjusted his glasses, blinking furiously. “Arachnids do not possess bones. Who made this? They clearly need a consultant with a background in anatomy.”

“What do they do with all the plastic meat, when they make the plastic skeletons?” Remus chimed in, but no one was listening, too distracted by the conversation at hand.

He pouted, sinking out behind the couch, while the four sides and Thomas chattered away about boring G-rated mockeries of horror. The only little kids who should be anywhere near Halloween were the creepy ones who stood at the ends of hallways. They only wanted to play!

Landing on a pile of exoskeletons in his room with a rickety crackling shatter, Remus crossed his arms over his chest. He rolled back and forth on his back, feeling the bits of solidified calcium shells and chitin cut E.coli filled lines into his arms and shoulders.

The paper-thin remains of a sea urchin rolled past his ear, the bumpy white oval fine as china. Remus turned his head, crushing the delicate skeleton with his cheek.

Hm.

Lurching upright, Remus began crushing the calcified graveyard to dust under his fingers, until all that remained was white clay, which he rolled and molded between his fingers.

Remus had never lost a game in Thomas’s life, and he wasn’t about to start now!  
…

Logan leaned over his desk in his room, posture ramrod perfect, as if someone had given him a textbook on ergonomics then filled his spine with lead. He first consulted a massive calendar, then perused a day planner, before returning to the calendar again.

From under the bed, a pair of glowing red eyes peered out. Silent as a nightmare, Remus lifted himself out of the tunnel-like space beneath the shadows of the covers, hovering suspended over the floor by his fingertips. Like a long spined urchin over the seafloor, he glided on all fours, until he was just behind the logical side’s chair.

Rising to his feet, Remus leaned close. He could taste the salt on the other’s skin as he breathed. With a jolt, he grabbed the back of the chair, just behind Logan’s shoulders.

“Eh, what’s up Dick-Doc?”

Logan’s pen froze, eyes blinking as if to clear out water. His head turned minutely, so as to see the other side out of the corner of his eye. Remus’s grin widened where he hovered over Logan’s shoulder.

“Hello Remus. May I ask what you are doing here?”

“Do I need an excuse to see my favorite book-nerd?” he said, poking the temples of Logan’s glasses out from behind his ear.

Logan wrinkled his nose, as the bridge of the thick round frames slid down his face. “I would appreciate it if you did not touch my glasses, as I need them to maintain optimal vision.”

“You’re no fun.” Remus blew a raspberry, but pulled his hand back from another poke to the other’s face. “So, whatcha doin, Calen-dork?”

Logan reached up to right his glasses, blinking rapidly. “Ever since Thomas’s schedule conflict with the wedding, I have taken it upon myself to ensure that his schedule is meticulous and organized, so as to avoid any stress in the future.”

“Huh, neat!” Remus bounced on his toes, hands braced against the back of Logan’s chair. “Anyway, wanna see something neat?”

Logan set down his pen, and pushed the papers he had been working on to the further corners of the desk, affixing his full attention on the other metaphysical being. “Is it something particularly disturbing?”

Remus rolled his eyes, hands already digging into the folds of his sash. “Would I make anything else?”

Logan adjusted his glasses. “Evidence has shown that your usual mode of creativity, while conventionally seen as ‘off color’ by sides such as Patton and Virgil, is not the only creativity you are capable of producing.“

“Can you teach me how to talk that much without breathing? I tried once, but I passed out, and-“ Remus’s eyes brightened, as he found whatever he was looking for. His hand drew out of the green fabric with a flourish, depositing a pile of bleeding bones and sinew onto Logan’s lap.

Logan looked down. He poked at the blob, and it wriggled, righting and assembling itself with a squeak. “Is this…an anatomically correct skeleton of a rat?”

Remus’s grin could have blinded someone driving past him, causing a massive car wreck. “I could hear you complaining about how stupid the Halloween animal skeletons looked, so I made a bunch to release into the mindscape.”

“Oh.” Logan blinked at him. “Oh, you were listening to my concerns about the misrepresentation of anatomically incorrect plastic skeletons present during the holiday of Halloween?”

“Uh duh, Steve Nerd-win.” Remus rocked back and forth, causing Logan’s chair to follow the motion. “Thomas is gonna dream about bone spiders for a week! Oh hey, what do you think a cat crawling out of its own skin would look like?”

Logan absently petted over the juicy rat’s tiny paws, making note of where the bones of its metacarpals met its claws. Remus was particularly proud of those; finding out how much of the gooey bits to include for the carotin of the nail beds to stick, without loosing the bony bones of the skeleton had taken him hours.

“I suppose it would depend on whether you treated the animal’s pelt as having already detached from the underlying muscle, and how connected the skin is to that muscle in the first place. Cats, for example, have loose fitting skin, which would be easy to remove.”

“Guess there /is/ more than one way to skin a cat!” Remus giggled. “Aren’t we all just bags of skin carrying around our squishy and crunchy bits inside?”

“I suppose one could phrase anatomy that way, however it leaves out several key features, such as the nervous system, endocrine system-“

Remus settled his chin on the back of Logan’s chair, watching as he listed the various components that made up a mammalian body. His fingers scratched silent lines into the fabric just behind Logan’s neck.

“But of course, if the creature in question were not of the kingdom Mammalia-” Logan cut himself short, a thought seeming to have sunk its teeth into the back of his head. “The slime mold I acquired from you died, then entirely vanished. I apologize that I will be unable to return it to you.”

Remus shrugged, chin still balanced on the back of the chair. “Yeah, when ideas like that don’t get used, they die horrible screaming deaths, then go back on the compost.”

“Fascinating, yet unfortunate.” Logan adjusted his glasses. “Will Lucky succumb to the same fate?”

“Eh~,” Remus tilted his flat palm back and forth. “Lucky’s got a bit more stick to its suckers, since it’s a part of me. I didn’t just conjure it. It’s still squirming around the trash heap, somewhere.” He leaned in close, teeth sharp. “Though if you’re that interested in seeing my tentacles, you could always just ‘come’ on by~”

“Thank you for re-affirming my invitation to your room. However, I have been too busy with work to engage in unproductive leisure time.”

Remus’s grin curled at the edges. “But you’re spending time with me!”

“Yes, well.” Logan coughed. “That reminds me. Remus, would you be willing to participate in an experiment?”

“Sure, nerd. Gimme your best dick shot!”

Logan turned his chair, causing Remus to take a step back. Standing, he crossed to the first on the rows of bookshelves, his dark guest close on his heels. “I would like you to select a book from my collection and assimilate the information inside.”

Remus leaned against the shelf, fingers skittering over the spines. “What’s this?”

Logan peered at the shelf. “That is the section on architecture and civil engineering, from Thomas’s high school physics class.” He adjusted his glasses. “I am rather fond of mosaics as an art form. The mathematical nature of the designs leads to a pleasing symmetry.”

“Huh, neat!” Remus’s ragged nails hooked one at random, pulling so the book toppled into his hand.

Logan watched, eyes bright with curiosity, as Remus’s mouth sprouted several new rows of teeth, sharp as razorblades. With a snick and a crunch, he bit through the hardback binding, cutting through paper and glue, leaving a comical bite-shaped portion of the book missing.

Remus chewed twice, red eyes never looking away from Logan’s, and swallowed. “Done and done. Then what?”

Logan held out a hand. “Please show me the book before you…consume it entirely, so that I may take notes as to the exact title. Also, may I be allowed to figuratively ‘shadow’ you through your next bout of creative process?”

Remus’s eyes blinked disjointedly. “You wanna be there?”

“Yes,” Logan said, making note of the book’s title on its intact spine. “Again, only if you are amenable.”

A grin shattered across Remus’s face, so wide that it split several more sharp tooth mouths across his cheeks, forehead, and neck.

“I’m always up for anything you can dish out!” he giggled, with a shimmy. “Just be sure to bring your raincoat, but leave the umbrella.”

“Excellent. Then let us proceed.”

…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Droid and Goldie for being brilliant Betas!


	4. Chapter 4

…

Logan swept up the damp remains of the metaphysical books Remus had left strewn across the floor of his room. Bits of paper, long threads used to sew the bindings, and chewed scraps of cardboard covers were all meticulously picked from the carpeting and placed in the cleared space on his desk.

He had chosen to utilize well-remembered memories for his experiment with the creative side. Thomas might have initially learned the physics and facts of architecture while in school, but he revisited the memories every time he thought about the construction of a building, or saw an interesting house design on various media platforms. That revision allowed Logan to easily remake a memory, not as it was, but the way it was when last recalled by Thomas. Like restoring the latest backup of a file.

Memories which Thomas had not accessed in a significant length of time were harder to restore. He cast an eye over several dusty shelves full of chemical formulas and mathematical equations. The writing inside had begun to fade, but Logan dared not try to repair them. He wasn’t sure whether he would be able to. Better to keep a fuzzy recollection in the back of Thomas’s mind, than realize that the information had wasted away from disuse.

Returning to the task at hand, Logan scanned the carpeting for any remaining shreds of books, before settling into a seat at his desk. Carefully, he began to sort through the shreds, lining them together piece by piece to reassemble the entirety of what they once were. Memories of when Thomas first learned about arches and cornerstones, warped together with a myriad of awe-filled musings of churches and skyscrapers, and every other time Thomas had recalled his knowledge of architecture in daily life.

As he worked, the scant few phrases pulled more remembered sentences from the ether and neurons of Thomas’s mind, creating gossamer thin connections between the shreds, that slowly reformed into an entire page. The pages shuffled and ordered under his ministrations, sewing themselves together inside a hard cover, until a completed book sat where a pile of fragmented thoughts once were.

Logan let out a breath, shoulders straightening from where he had been hunched over the desktop. The recalled book of facts now had a blue cover, where once it had been…well, not blue. Logan was….mostly sure about that.

He stood, stretching his back, and placed the book in its proper place on the shelves.

A quick knock sounded from his door. Adjusting his tie, Logan crossed his room to open it.

“Virgil,” he greeted the side standing in his doorway. “May I ask what brings you to my room?”

“I need- I need to talk to you.” Virgil’s hands hung stiffly at his sides, and his hood was drawn up. He glared shiftily at the hallway floor, not making eye contact with Logan.

“Virgil, my door is always metaphorically open, should you or any other side of Thomas wish to utilize my services.”

Virgil’s eyes flicked up to meet his, before darting back to the carpet. “Can we….not do this in the hallway?”

“Of course, whatever will put you at ease, Virgil.” Past data suggested Virgil was more likely to speak plainly when in a comfortable environment.

Logan stepped aside, allowing the other side to enter his room. Upon crossing the doorway, Virgil’s posture became minutely straighter.

Previous observations, and Logan’s own experience in Virgil’s room, made Logan speculate that the side’s predilection towards fear was now bending in the direction of statistical accident probabilities, as well as past experiences of situations that had been factually recorded into logical patterns for analysis and understanding. He wondered whether the figurative ‘gut feeling’ Virgil normally presided over was heightened or lessened by being in Logan’s room. However, that was an experiment for another time.

Shutting the door, Logan waited for the other side to speak. If Logan spoke first, it would increase the time it took for Virgil to make his point by an average of fifty-nine seconds.

Virgil’s fidgeting with the ends of his sleeves increased in frequency, until finally he blurted- “What is Remus doing to you? Is he stalking you? Blackmail? Extortion?”

Logan blinked. As with many such conversations with Virgil, the phrase, ‘that escalated quickly’ was applicable.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean. What makes you think that Remus is ‘doing’ anything to me?”

Virgil hunched into himself, glaring at the floor. “You defended him, and he was all over you last time he was with Thomas.”

“Ah, and you believe that is sufficient evidence to come to the conclusion that Remus is coercing me in some way?”

“Why else would you be-“ Virgil flailed around a hand, “nice to him?”

“If you are referring to when I prevented Thomas from a figuratively fruitless attempt at driving Remus away, then let me assure you, that was not me being ‘nice’ as you put it. It is simply illogical and unproductive to try to suppress intrusive thoughts.”

“Yeah, but then you were talking to him and-“ Virgil growled inarticulately. Drawing himself up, he met Logan’s gaze squarely. “He plays these…games, or at least that’s what he calls them. He dragged me into a closet when Thomas was a teenager, and left me there. He only let me out because,” here Virgil made finger quotes, “ ‘It’s boring when I stop screaming’.”

Logan hummed. “Did you do anything to provoke such actions on Remus’s part?”

“No!” Virgil bristled. “He doesn’t care- he doesn’t need a reason, he just /does/ these /things/! You could be just sitting on the couch minding your own fears, when he starts strangling you to see how long it takes for you to pass out!”

“Three minutes.”

Virgil startled from his spiral. “What?”

“It takes three minutes for the average human to pass out from oxygen loss.”

“That’s-“ Virgil shuddered. “Horrifying. But that’s not the point!”

Logan adjusted his glasses. “I apologize. Could you please elaborate on the metaphorical point? Unless you are trying to communicate information about objects with points, in which case, I must reiterate my reservations about you having knives in your possession.” 

“That’s not-“ Virgil growled. “Look, I’m trying to warn you to stay away from Remus!”

“As I stated before, Remus cannot cause any lasting effect-“

“Yeah, to Thomas, but he can get to us!” Virgil made an aborted sweep of his arms. “He threw a freaking knife at your head!”

“It was a shuriken,” Logan corrected. “And harm to our metaphysical bodies is impermanent, as we are not real. Ergo, Remus harming our ‘bodies’ is impermanent and therefore not worth ‘stressing’ over.”

“He does make an impact though!” Virgil growled again, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “You’re just not getting it!”

Logan contemplated this. “No, I do not understand. However, I do not believe that you understand either. Every side ‘makes an impact’ as you put it. However, you seem to believe that the ‘impact’ is wholly good or bad. You yourself know this to not be true.”

Virgil opened his mouth, but Logan cut him off before he could speak.

“I assure you, I am taking steps to determine the ‘impact’ Remus creates, so as to provide better understanding for Thomas, and all of us.”

Virgil pulled in on himself. “There is nothing I can say to you, is there?”

“What are you talking about? You’re saying words to me right now?”

Virgil sighed, his shoulders rising, and rolling back with the motion. “Right, ok, I tried. I’m going back to my room.”

Logan adjusted his glasses and reached to open the door. “If you are sure, Virgil. You know that I enjoy our discussions, and value your company.”

Virgil lingered in the doorway. “Yeah, I know. Just…be careful, all right?”

“I am always careful, when the situation calls for it.”

The half smile he got in return seemed rueful. “Sure you are, L.”  
…

The next time Logan was interrupted, it was again by a knock to his door, this one softer than the one before.

“Sorry to bother you, bud,” Patton said, when the door opened. “I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing?”

Logan blinked. “I am quite well Patton. Your concern is gratifying. If that is all,” he made to close the door.

Patton held up his hands. “Is this a good time for us to have a chat? If you’re busy I can come back later, when you’re done with all those important brain things.”

“I am no more occupied than usual at this time, but am able to take a respite to speak with you,” Logan said.

Patton smiled, the corners of his mouth turning down half a degree less than what would indicate his usual high level of good cheer.

“Great! That’s great.” The duo stood together, Logan in the partially open doorway, Patton in the hall, shifting from foot to foot.

Finally, Patton cleared his throat. “Of course, I’m always supportive of you making new friends. But you know, you don’t need to do that just because you think you have to.You know that, right?”

Logan’s brow pinched. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning.”

Patton rubbed his hands together. “Just, we all know /certain sides/ can be a handful for /certain other sides/ to handle, but just because /you/ can handle them better than us, doesn’t mean you have to go out and handle them by yourself!”

Logan adjusted his glasses, mind flicking through the catalogue of recent memories which might trigger Patton to question his choice of company. Ah. He sighed. “Did Virgil express his concerns to you?”

“We all are just…worried about you kiddo! You’ve been spending an awful lot of time alone in your room, instead of out here with your fam-ILY!” Patton wrung his hands. “And I don’t want you to think that you have to deal with all the…icky thoughts in Thomas’s head by yourself.”

“I assure you, I am not burdened in any significant way through my interactions with Remus. As you said, I am the most optimal side to interact with him, but that does not mean I am doing so under duress. I hope that belays any concerns you might have?”

Patton’s hands were clasped together, but he nodded sharply. “Ok. I’ll- I’ll trust your judgement here Logan.” His expression turned earnest. “But- but if you need me for anything, or- or if you can’t handle things by yourself any more, just, please, you know you can call me, right?”

Logan allowed a small upturning of his lips to grace his features. “Of course I do Patton. I thank you for your concern, but please know that it is not necessary. I have everything handled.”

Patton nodded. “Ok. Um. Will you be down for movie night tonight? I’ll convince Roman to let you choose what we watch?”

“I see no reason that I would be unable to attend.”

Patton’s smile was thirty percent wider than average, causing his eyes to crease. “Great! Don’t be late, or all the snacks will be gone. You know how much i love Pop-corn!” He waved as he headed off down the hall.  
…

Logan was beginning to see a trend in the recent discussions directed at him, though with only two data points as the sample size, the results were inconclusive. However, when a regal rap against his door disturbed his work, he prepared himself for a confrontation.

“Hello Roman,” Logan said as he opened the door.

Roman tossed his hair. “The Flying Purple People Worrier mentioned that you might, for some unfathomable reason, be spending time with my brother! I of course assured him of the preposterousness of that-“

“I am.”

Roman’s eyes opened wide, mouth hanging open mid monologue. “You’re what?”

“Spending time with Remus. We are conducting an experiment together.”

Roman put a hand to his chest, a shocked gasp on his lips. “What? You never ask /me/ to do nerd-science with you!”

Logan adjusted his glasses. “You have never shown any interest in joining me.”

“Well, yeah, why would I want to do nerd stuff? But that’s not the point! And it’s not like you ever want to help with /my/ ideas!” Roman crossed his arms petulantly over his chest.

“Oh,” Logan brightened. “Do you have ideas that you wish for my help on?”

“Why, yes! In fact, I had the most fantastic idea! There’s an enchanted castle, and a beautiful mosaic of a handsome man made of the most pure of pearls and ivory, that can foretell of great disaster!” Roman adopted the loose posture of an orator, one hand tucked into the small of his back, while the other gesticulated with each word. “However the mosaic is in truth a handsome knight, enchanted to forever be stuck to the wall! A handsome prince then travels into the mosaic’s bejeweled kingdom to save the knight, and they fall utterly in love!”

The back of his wrist touched his forehead to show just how dramatically tragic the love story was. “So the prince must journey into the strange backwards realm of the mosaic, and save his one true love! And then they live happily ever after!”

Logan adjusted his glasses. “But how does he save the knight? And how did the knight become cursed in such a manor? And how can life be sustained inside of a mosaic, unless there is some form of animatronics involved-“

Roman groaned. “Ugh, why do you always have to make things harder than they need to be, Book-nerd?”

Logan pressed his lips tightly together, forcing his hands still at his sides. “I apologize. Is that all?”

“No, I mean-“ Roman pressed two fisted hands to the space between his brows, with a growl.

Logan repressed a sigh. Confronting Roman in any way to gain clarity of the figurative or emotional meanings behind his words had a ninety-seven-point-six percent chance of evoking an argument between them. Staying silent and letting him run his course lowered that percentage by more than sixty-three percent.

“What I mean is- is-“ Roman crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “Why are you picking him over me? Am I-“ he gulped a breath of air. “Do you like his ideas more than mine? Is that it?”

Logan’s brows furrowed. “What could lead you to thinking such a thing, Roman? As I have stated before, creativity is not my strong suit. Therefore, while your work serves an ultimate purpose in Thomas’s chosen career, I do not have the expertise to weigh the creative works of your brother over yours.”

Roman brightened, like a sunflower turning to warmth. “But you /do/ like me better?”

“I did not say that-“

“But you did say my work was more important to Thomas!”

“That is not-“

But Roman’s gaze was already turned away. “See, I knew you liked me better! I’ll go tell the others to stop worrying!”

Logan watched as Roman practically waltzed down the hallway, still rhapsodizing. Sighing, he shut the door.  
…

By the time the fourth knock came, Logan had sufficient data points to make a trend line in possible conversational topics of the day.

“You are going to warn me away from any further interactions with Remus and express concern for my wellbeing and mental soundness, due to said past interactions,” Logan stated to the newest guest on his doorstep.

Janus lowered his hand from where it had been raised to knock, tongue flicking over his lips in a barely noticeable tasting of the air. “Hello to you too, Logan. Your hospitality, as always, is entirely polite and welcoming.”

“Am I wrong in my conclusions?” Logan said, ramrod posture giving the illusion of height, to Janus’s more relaxed shoulders, despite them both being the same measurements in all aspects.

“You seem to be in a more uptight mood than usual,” Janus said, head tilted to glance sideways at Logan through his more human eye. “I can come back later, when you’re feeling better?”

“I assure you, what you may be misconstruing as emotional outbursts will not affect my response to whatever you have to say.”

“Oh, of course they won’t!” Janus’s smile did not cause wrinkles to appear around his eyes, implying a lack of sincerity to his words.

Logan adjusted his glasses. “Please state your reasons for speaking with me.”

“Do I need a reason to check up on everyone’s favorite side?”

“Past actions on your part show that you do nothing without reason.”

Janus straightened, looking Logan full in the face. The flattening of his expression might indicate some form of surprise, though Logan had no past data to make a firm assertion. “All right, Logan, since you asked so nicely.”

His head tilted slightly, yellow and green eye focusing fully on Logan. “What are you hoping to achieve by interacting with Remus?”

“As with all of my interactions with Thomas’s sides, I seek to gain knowledge about our functions and purpose, so as to better help Thomas understand himself.”

“But surely you already know what Remus’s function is, do you not?”

“Current observational data, and Remus’s own admissions, suggest that Remus presides over the spontaneous and less socially acceptable aspects of the imaginative process, colloquially known as ‘intrusive thoughts’.”

“Very good,” Janus said, clapping his gloved hands together.

“Why thank you,” Logan said.

Janus’s hands dropped with a small sigh. “And I’m sure you understand the unpredictable nature of such thoughts and the rather sticky ends they can lead to? I would imagine that such an organized and meticulous sides such as yourself would have no problem with that.”

“Remus’s creations do create many fluids which could be described as ‘sticky’,” Logan adjusted the watch at his wrist. “However, I can assure you it is not a problem.”

“I’m surprised at how well you have handled his brand of…creativity so far. It must be so difficult with how chaotic he can be, and I’m sure all of those nonsensical things he says would drive a less logical side mad, let alone you.”

The corners of Logan’s mouth pinched. “I would appreciate it if you did not disparage another side unnecessarily. Remus is here as a part of Thomas, and multiple noted psychologists have cited the harm one incurs by speaking badly about oneself. I would think that you, as self-preservation, would care about Thomas’s mental health.” 

Janus stared at him, thin nictitating membrane flashing over his left eye. “Remus is as much a part of Thomas as any of us, but there are parts that are useful in the moment, and parts that must be ignored to get ahead in other moments.”

Logan met his gaze steadily. “We are all necessary to Thomas, whether or not Thomas, and therefore we, understand that necessity.”

Janus remained unblinking. “You will be hurt. He won’t mean to. Remus never /means/ to. However, his nature is to push things too far. If you don’t push back, he will push you off the edge.”

Logan wondered whether maintaining prolonged eye contact was a trait ubiquitous among the less wholesome sides of Thomas. Virgil not exhibiting such a trait could be an outlier in the data.

“He is going to push you too far, and you won’t be able to do your job. And while I’m the one who is going to have to push him down for you, you’re the one who’s going to have to cleanup whatever mess he makes.”

Logan straightened his tie with one hand. “Thank you for the suggestion, Janus, I will take it under consideration. However, I believe my own personal observations deem your advice to be unnecessary.”

Janus rolled his eyes, and leaned back from the doorway. “Never let it be said that I didn’t try.” He flipped his cape over his shoulder, and walked away down the hall.  
…

The fifth time Logan was disturbed from his work, it was not by a knock at his door, but by a summons to the material world of Thomas’s living room. Based on recent conversational data, Logan expected a forty-five percent likelihood that he would be confronted about his association with Remus once again.

Roman and Virgil were in their accustomed spots, however, Janus appeared to have risen up beside Patton. The deceitful side in question seemed surprised at his inclusion, but his expression flattened out to a veneer of indifference as he began fussing with his cape and hat.

Thomas’s grin was so wide as to cause his zygomaticus muscles to become sore, if the expression were to be held for a prolonged time. However, given his figuratively palpable glee, that hypothesis had a high probability of becoming a reality. Logan began mapping out routes to the medicine cabinet for painkillers, and recalling whether Thomas still owned a heating pad.

Logan’s musings were cut short, as they increasingly were, by Thomas’s delighted announcement.

“Guys, I just got a call from the casting director for the Alfred Hitchcopalucas film!” He pumped his fists into the air, one of which still clutched his cell phone. “She said a new part for side characters just opened up, and she wants me to come back and audition for a different role in the film!”

Roman screamed so shrilly, he was in danger of damaging his own hearing. Patton cheered as well, though his smile seemed a touch more haunted than his normal carefree exuberance.

Virgil immediately began a steady muttering narrative of everything that could possibly go wrong, ranging from Thomas forgetting his lines to him crashing his car on the way to the audition and dying horribly.

“This time, no distractions! Go straight for the piñata!” Janus said, fists clenched for emphasis. Seeming to catch himself, he coughed, and straightened his gloves. “I mean, good. Great.”

“A real movie set! With a real director!” Roman said through his gibbering glee. “Then when she sees how talented we are, we’ll be whisked off to fame and fortune!”

“This is excellent news for your career, Thomas,” Logan said, allowing a smile to touch his lips. “I will arrange your schedule optimally, forthwith.”

Thomas beamed at him. “Thanks Logan! No double booking for me this time! One goal: Callback.”

…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …  
> AN:  
> Am I ignoring Roman angst in this fic? Yes, yes I am. He’s fine. Really. I’m sure.
> 
> Thanks to Para, Goldie, and Droid for being the besets beta readers ever in the world!


	5. Chapter 5

…  
…ch 5

The mindscape had been a flurry of activity ever since Thomas’s announcement of a second chance at the callback.

Roman had barricaded himself in his room, building up and tearing apart characters for Thomas to inhabit when he read the script. Patton could be seen in the company of Janus, both sides bickering over the ethics of ‘taking out’ the competition.

Virgil skulked the edges of Thomas’s mind, his steady stream of nerves buzzing through the walls.This caused Thomas to re-read the script aloud every night before bed, trying on the characters Roman presented to him each night, before discarding them again like badly-fitted sweaters

Meanwhile, Logan occupied himself with keeping Thomas’s schedule clear. The task was not arduous, so Logan found himself less occupied than his fellow sides.

So, when a familiar prickle at the back of his neck interrupted his scheduling, Logan simply put down his pen. “Salutations, Remus.”

“Hey, Loga-rhythm!” Putrid breath, like seaweed left out in the sun, caressed the shell of Logan’s ear.

Logan shut his day planner and set it aside. Past occurrences showed that Remus tended to… splash whatever his current fixation was around the vicinity. Papers secured, Logan allowed himself to turn his head, to meet Remus’s red gaze out of the corner of his eye.

“Whacha got there?” Remus said, tracing the path of Logan’s fingers as they organized the papers and schedules.

“Ah, I am simply rechecking Thomas’s schedule, to ensure that no conflicts arise to prevent him from going to the callback.”

Logan could see Remus blink, the slightest of frowns, barely a five degree turn, touching his lips. “Do the what now?”

He paused in his organization. “Are you unaware of Thomas having received a second opportunity to win the callback?”

Remus’s mustache twitched as he thought. “I can’t really hear much up top, when I get pushed down into my room,” Remus said. He wriggled his fingers; Logan could feel the phantom touches like a breeze against his cheek. “When I get put way down, I’ll just take a nap until my corpse floats back to the surface.”

Logan cleared his throat, and adjusted his tie. “Well, Thomas has been given an opportunity to win a callback for a large scale professional production. We have all been focused and preparing for the event.” He gesticulated at the copy of the script on his bookshelf. It was more solid than the other bound manuscripts, due to Thomas’s efforts at memorization.

Remus’s eyes glinted as he stared at the script, his expression reminiscent of a Yellowstone wolf documentary Thomas had seen in his youth. “Sounds neat!”

“Yes,” Logan said. He cleared his throat again. “May I inquire as to the purpose of your visit, Remus?”

Incisors glinted millimeters from his face as Remus grinned. Logan wondered how the teeth were anchored in his jaw, as normal human configuration would not provide the room needed for so many canines. Also, teeth of that number would be cumbersome in an omnivorous creature like a human, as well as creating a potential hazard to soft tissue in the mouth, like the tongue and inner cheeks.

Remus bounced on the toes of his feet, hands flapping like pulled off spider legs at his sides. “You wanted to know when I made something next.”

Logan turned to face him fully. “Yes. Have you come to show me your latest creative endeavor?”

“Well, yes and no.” Remus tugged on his mustache. “I wanted to show you what I made, but it exploded into spiders, so I thought I could tell you about it instead.”

Logan blinked. “I am unfamiliar with the inner workings of the portions of the imagination under your purview. Was it not meant to ‘explode into spiders’ as you said?”

Remus shrugged. “I dunno. Is art ever meant to do anything?”

Logan contemplated that. “Philosopher and writer Joseph Campbell once said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that ‘Art has no purpose but to be, and any art made explicitly to evoke an emotion is pornography’.”

“Sounds like my kinda philosophy,” Remus sniggered.

“Here, of course he meant ‘pornography’ as a medium meant to attract and sell an idea or product, rather than the more commonly used meaning of sexual acts mass produced and sold,” Logan said, once the laughter had petered off. “Answering your earlier question, under his philosophy, no. Art is not ‘meant’ to do anything.”

“Huh, neat! I’m gonna give Thomas weird sex dreams about philosophers now.” Remus’s hand pulled at one of his ruffled sleeves. “Anyway, since your experiment got ruined, I guess I’ll go now, and-“

“Unforeseen variables do not ‘ruin’ scientific endeavors.” Logan pulled a small black notebook from its place on his desk and stood. “I believe investigating the scene where your creative endeavor ‘turned into spiders’ might still provide insight useful to the continuation of the experiment.”

“You…want to go to my room?”

Logan adjusted his glasses. “I have a standing invitation, do I not?”

Remus’s grin was luminescent, his saliva flashing with what Logan assumed to be some form of bioluminescent microbial life, which can often be found lighting up the surface of the ocean. It made his teeth seem shadowed, and sharper.

“Neat!” His shoulders wiggled. “Do you want to do a little experiment of our own~?”

Logan pushed back the chair, allowing Remus enough time to move to avoid a collision, and stood. “I am always open to expanding knowledge through the scientific method. What did you have in mind?”

Remus danced back, until his achilles tendons collided with the frame of Logan’s bed. Still vibrating, he posed one hand on his hip, and swept the other in a low gesticulation, ending at the space between the mattress and floor.

“I’m gonna take you on a magic ride under the carpet!” His eyebrows wriggled. “If you know what I mean~”

Logan crossed one arm across his chest to support his other hand, which tapped against his lips. Each side had modes of transportation unique to their form and function. Virgil tended to appear spontaneously, or at the slightest of stimuli, while Logan walked a steady beat through Thomas’s mind, only taking large leaps, when the occasion suited him.

Past data suggested Remus’s preferred mode of appearance was behind an object, such as a TV, closet door, or couch. Remus likely maintained the habit of imagery encompassing his metaphorical movements and actions, such as how Roman envisioned rising to the forefront of Thomas’s mind via a golden elevator similar to the one depicted in Willy Wonka.

Therefore, potential imagery which would encompass his mode of transportation…

Logan moved his hand away from his lips to point at the other side. “You have the ability to move through the mindscape…using the spaces under our beds and other objects.”

Remus shrugged, eyes tracking the others’s fingers. “Well, yeah! All monsters hide under the beds, and they have to hide somewhere under the under-the-beds, or else you would be able to see them when you look!”

Logan let his hands fall back to his sides. “Fascinating.”

Holding out his hand, Remus wriggled his fingers, spine still bent unnaturally. “So, you wanna roll around the carpet with me?”

Logan stretched out his arm.

Remus’s hand darted out, like a barracuda biting a shiny bracelet off a tourist’s wrist, to snap around Logan’s hand.

“I’ve never taken another side down there, so I dunno what could happen to you. Like, what if all your skin melts off? Or a monster eats your skeleton out of your mouth, leaving you floating around like a flesh jellyfish?” His eyes were feverish as he reeled Logan in closer and closer.

Logan blinked, the Duke’s nose nearly brushing his own. “I too am curious as to the outcome of traversing the mindscape using a method unknown to me.”

“That’s the spirit!” Remus crowed. With a twist and a giggle, he wrapped himself around Logan, and dove into the shadows under the bed.

Logan had never traveled using the preferred mode of transport of another side. The closest approximation he could compare the experience to was when Thomas pulled the sides along into different portions of his mind, such as when they all journeyed to Virgil’s room.

However, where Thomas’s pull felt akin to walking along a familiar path, Remus’s….

Putrid green lights, like laser pointers, stabbed against Logan’s eyelids, which he reflexively snapped shut. His sense of direction spun as Remus’s dive rolled over and onward like marbles down the drain, disorienting. Creaking moans akin to screaming whales reverberated through his chest, too sonorous for only his ears to feel the vibrations. Gelatinous pressure thrust against his nose and mouth, as if the weight of the ocean sought the vacuum of his lungs. Logan made to flinch away, to seek air, but the cold bands of the Duke’s arms wrapped around his body, keeping his arms close to his ribcage.

Then, suddenly, everything stopped.

Logan gasped, fingers tangling in the lace and tassels of the Duke’s tunic. He opened his eyes.

The teetering towers of refuse marking Remus’s room, loomed overhead, while the familiar perfume of low tide stabbed his sinuses. Faceted red eyes bore into his own, head tilted slightly to the side. Logan noticed strands of rotting sea grass threading its way through the Duke’s hair, giving it a drowned man’s shimmer.

“You don’t have any gills this time.” Remus’s lower lip jutted out in a pout, eyes tracing Logan’s features. “I wanted to see what you would turn into. I brought one of Virgil’s pillows down here once, and it turned into a fungus that killed all the coral reefs.”

Logan leaned back, feeling the other’s arms press against his latissimus dorsi muscles and around his shoulders. A line of tension in his spine tightened, then relaxed as swampy coolness seeped through his polo.

“I have become more practiced in maintaining my own primary functions while in proximity with your room.” The tide of murky thoughts lapped around his shins, staining his pants with scum and decay. However, Logan was too preoccupied cataloguing the minute ticking twitch of Remus’s mustache to notice. “Do you not also have methods to achieve the same outcome? I have never observed a deviance in your function relative to any metaphysical location.”

One arm unwound from his back, trailing across the fabric of his polo, pulling the shirt slightly free from where it was tucked into his pants.

Remus scratched a claw into his ear. “I dunno. Whenever I’m in your room, I end up wanting to eat all your books. I don’t think that’s any different than how I am anywhere else…” He trailed off. His other hand released Logan’s shoulders to scratch at a spot on the back of his neck. “Except with Janus, but I dunno if that’s the same thing.”

“Fascinating,” Logan said, taking a step back. His heel crackled and crunched down through the muck in a viscerally pleasing way. Something slithered under the water, brushing against his ankle.

Logan looked down, just in time to see something slimy and green breach the surface of the water, and wrap around his knee.

“Salutations, Lucky.” Logan said, reaching down and petting the tentacle. It writhed under his touch like a worm on the pavement after a rainstorm, inching higher up his pants leg.

Taking a deep breath, Logan re-centered his core, compartmentalizing the corrupting influence of the room under layers of rationale. Such exercises were less successful to combat the influences of the rooms of other sides. However, as Logan and Remus’s functions cohabited an equal and opposite feedback system, Logan was able to metaphorically breakdown the green light of Remus’s influences back into the dark indigo of his own.

Lucky twined between his fingers, but Logan drew away before the utility of his hand was compromised. He had a purpose for being here, after all.

Remus shrugged, mind seeming to unstick from wherever it had stuck. His arms untwisted from around his person, like a contortionist out of a vacuum bag. “Hm, but it’s whatever,” he sang. “Now where were we?”

“We are both standing in your room. Did you forget?” Logan said, pulling a pen and binder from the ether in which to take notes. “What was it that you wanted to show me?”

“Oh, yeah!” Remus’s eyes lit up like the beginnings of a nuclear implosion. His posture slumped again just as quickly. “But it ran away, so I can’t show you!”

Logan made a note in his binder. “Ah, I see. Can you explain how you reached the creative interpretation of your creation using the materials you acquired in my room, before it,” he checked his notes, “ ‘exploded into spiders’?”

Remus scratched the back of his head, destroying a civilization of lice and leaving thousands orphaned. “Hmmm, I dunno. I just, did it.”

Logan made another note. “Let us start by establishing a timeline. Do you recall what information you, hm, gained?”

“Oh, well, I chewed through that shelf on architecture, then later when I was pulling out yesterday’s set of teeth, I found a piece of paper with a picture of a mosaic, then I started using my teeth to make one, and it only makes sense for a tooth mosaic to talk, like a magic mirror, but cooler, so then I started teaching it swears, but it only wanted to talk in MCR lyrics, and that got me thinking of Virgil, and then it started only talking about bad things that could happen, and then I punched it, and all the teeth turned into little spiders that crawled away.”

Logan hummed, pen outlining a diagram. “Did you do anything that prompted your work to do that?”

Remus fixed Logan with a guileless stare. “I’m toxic. Everything I touch dies. You know, like that Brittany song. Maybe it ran away before I could kill it. Everything always tries at least a few times.”

Logan paused in his note-taking to adjust his glasses. “While all octopi are venomous, and therefore that trait might pass onto you when you take their form, I doubt that is true. I have seen you touch many things that have not immediately expired. Unless you are merely commenting on the mortality of all living things, with the exception of some types of jellyfish, then, yes, everything will die, regardless of whether you touch it or not.”

Remus’s head jerked, like a rusty cog springing free in a deathtrap, which could utilize a number of laws of physics to achieve-

Logan centered himself with another slow breath. “From your descriptions, your creative endeavor largely resembles a creative idea Roman presented to me earlier.”

“Hey, I’m no copier!” Remus huffed, arms crossing over his chest. “I make everything with my own sweat and blood! Or, well, sweat and blood that is in my possession!”

“On the contrary, I am formulating a hypothesis that Roman’s ideas originate, in fact, from you.” Logan turned his notebook to expose a diagram.

“Factual information and experience are accumulated by myself here,” he pointed to the start of the chart, before moving to the next point. “Then you appear to accumulate and rework those thoughts into new patterns and combinations, however your proximity to the unconscious makes it difficult for these thoughts to reach full coherence, before disrupting.” He moved to the next point. “And the fragments you put together seem to make their way into Roman’s portion of the imagination, where his nature allows him to apply narrative and structure, to form a more coherent creative idea.” Final point. “And Thomas can utilize those ideas for creative endeavors.”

Remus squinted at the notebook, tongue running along his serrated teeth. Logan wondered whether he needed corrective lenses, as Thomas himself was nearsighted. Roman preferred contact lenses, however Logan was unsure whether Janus or Virgil used them as well. He filed the observation away to peruse at a later date.

“Huh.” The intrusive thought traced a ragged nail over the diagram, leaving a slick of oil on the paper in his wake. “So, the more things I eat in your room, the more ideas I can help Thomas have?”

Closing his binder, Logan allowed the metaphysical items to vanish back into the figurative light which made up his being. His mind buzzed with half-formed hypotheses, still overcome by the high of an idea gone well. “I suppose, though a one-to-one assumption like that will need more experimentation.”

“Guess that means you’ll be seeing a lot more of me~” Remus’s voice came from a point too close to his left ear, just behind his shoulder. “I’ll feast on your tears, like a butterfly in a turtle’s eye!”

“Butterflies also are known to consume blood and urine as well,” Logan said, hardly turning his head to meet the other’s eye, lest their faces collide.

Hot breath ghosted over the back of Logan’s neck. “I would totally go down on your brain like a zombie, Count Lo-gu-la. I bet it would be faster than having to break into your room to eat books.”

“You are of course welcome to any research material I have in my possession.” Logan adjusted his glasses. “I am interested to see whether the different methods by which you acquire knowledge affect the creative outcome you produce. We could experiment with fact dictation, as opposed to consumption.”

A brush against his neck, as if Remus’s chin were almost leaning against his shoulder. “Aw, does Logie want to read me a bedtime story? You know I would love to listen to your dick-tation all night long~”

“I know.” Logan’s head turned, his cheek pressing against the side of Remus’s head. “I find your appreciation of my work and your companionship to significantly improve both my mood and, therefore, my productivity.”

Remus’s brows furrowed, corners of his eyelids crinkling so as to convey an expression of consideration, or perhaps confusion. Logan would need more data.

When Remus spoke, his words were slow, as if he were having trouble articulating them together. “Is that nerd-speak for you like having me around?”

Logan considered this. “Yes,” he said at last. “I find myself preferring your companionship to the alternative of remaining by myself, or in the company of another side.”

Remus’s features stilled, the usual frenetic wincing twitches under his skin gone. His eyes widened ten degrees larger than average, muscles of his jaw relaxing to partially show utterly human teeth between his lips. Logan blinked, cataloguing the novel expression to compare to past data for later deciphering.

A near moment - only one and one third of a minute rather than a minute and a half- later, Remus’s features snapped taut once more, like Achilles tendon to Hector’s spear. The hollows of his face drooped, teeth elongating and curling around and beyond his lips, as his features melted and blended together in a miasma of green.

The metaphysical body wrapped around Logan’s pressed closer, breaking apart into spikes of light, like the sun filtering down through the layers of the ocean. The green invaded the indigo edges of Logan’s own being, twining and entwining against the set borders of Logic’s domain like invasive ivy.

“Does this mean I’m winning the game,” Remus squealed, roots prying cracks in the mortar, like Chernobyl’s radioactive remains being overtaken by the wilderness.

Logan sucked in a gasp, breathing in a swirl of green that lightened his core to darkest teal- like an x-ray showing cancer spots spreading through the heart and lungs- latching, leeching, impossible to remove without cutting chunks away- surgery, blood, trapped alone without anesthetic, facing the pain of choice or the quiet acceptance- murder and blood and murder- The script? The script! Murder the script! Inconsistencies! Illogical to use that acid combination! It would barely make a pH of six! Much more fun to use a strong base- easier to dispose of mildly acidic humans- trap the snitch in a barrel, roll it into the sea- what chemicals what chemicals?- So easy, just need to remember-

A touch to his thigh jolted all the pieces of Logan back purely into the shape of himself. He gasped, snatching thoughts like flying papers to compartmentalize back into their figurative boxes, and looked down.

Lucky, who had been inching his way upwards from Logan’s shin, had chosen that moment to pluck at the logical side’s belt buckle with the thinnest part of its arm.

However, before Logan could brush the offending limb away, Remus’s hand darted out.

Viper fast, Remus reached down and across Logan’s body, one hand braced on his shoulder to pull the offending tentacle off of Logan’s leg. The ruffles and frills of his outfit pressed against the thin fabric of Logan’s polo. A clammy coolness seeped into his skin at the points of contact, causing the pilomat response to break out across his skin like an outbreak of smallpox. Indigo shuddered, wavering under the green onslaught.

Lucky thrashed in Remus’s grip, but he shook it, like one would a hand full of pins and needles- which would cause the pins to sink further into flesh until they met bone- Logan took another breath, compartmentalizing the train of thought.

“I’m the only tentacle allowed around Nerd-Brain’s junk!” Remus snarled, teeth snapping, as he squished the tentacle between his palms like modeling clay. Both of Remus’s arms looped over Logan’s shoulders, causing the fabric of his polo to ride up and untuck from his belt as the other moved.

Lucky tried to flail out of the ball it was being rolled into, but Remus had already reared back, one hand gripping Logan’s collar, and chucked it into the distance. The sound of a collision and cascading junk splashing into the murky swamp echoed around the room.

Logan’s panting had eased down to slow deep breaths, as he worked to re-organize himself. Red eyes darted, minnow-quick around the room, to Logan’s face, and back again. Remus leaned in, lips parting as if to speak, when Logan felt the telltale tug behind his breast bone, which signified Thomas summoning his sides.

“I apologize,” Logan said. He took a step to the side, detaching himself entirely from Remus’s embrace. “I am being summoned.”

Remus leaned back, one hand waving, as he gazed consideringly into the distant towers of junk. “You go answer our overlord’s booty call.” Red eyes rolled back to meet his, corners crinkled to indicate excitement, accompanied by a sharp grin of happiness. “I got an idea for your science game thing!”

“What? No. What?” Logan adjusted his tie, and tucked in the tail of his shirt. “Do you mean the scientific method?”

Remus’s hand flapped harder, shooing him away. “Yeah, whatever. Don’t you have a call to take?”

“Yes,” Logan said, straightening his glasses. “We will have to continue our discussion later.”

“Heck yeah we will~” Remus said, shark teeth twinkling to match his faceted eyes.

With a last combing of fingers through his hair to ensure a presentable appearance, Logan rose to the surface of Thomas’s thoughts.

Thomas was hunched over his laptop, opening and closing browsers and folders seemingly at random. “Logan, can I talk to you for a minute?” he said, not looking up.

“Of course Thomas, I am available to you for any length of time.” Logan stepped closer, noting how the files seemed to be a combination of old essays, reports, and stories written during Thomas’s school days.

“So I was reading through the script they sent me, and there’s this scene where they, like, melt a guy in a vat of acid, and I can’t remember whether that’s possible or not. Like, I’m pretty sure what they mixed together doesn’t do that, but I just can’t remember! I know it’s something with acid base chemistry, but…” He turned to Logan. “It’s been bothering me all day! I was trying to find some of my old class notes, but I think they’re all at mom’s house!”

Logan felt his pulse increase. Thomas was asking his help on a scientific question. Thomas wanted his help to learn and understand a logical inconsistency. Thomas wanted to learn. Logan cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses.

“I am glad that you called me, Thomas. Being in charge of your long term memory storage, I can of course help you resolve the issue. Give me a moment to collect the relevant reference material.”

Logan sank down, mind figuratively whirling. In the breath it took to transition from Thomas’s living space to his room, Logan had already mapped out a route by which Thomas would be so entranced by his remembered lessons in chemistry, that he would re-read the one chemical engineering text book which remained his his possession, and be so overcome with a love of knowledge, that he would immediately go to the local library to find more. Perhaps Thomas might even sign up for an online course-

His feet landed on the sensible carpeting of his room with a flutter of paper scraps.

Logan blinked, brows furrowing as he looked down. The floor was coated in soggy bits of paper and book bindings.

Remus sat in the middle of the carnage, methodically tearing his way through the index of a math textbook.

Logan’s spine straightened as the muscles along his back and shoulders tensed, ready to snap.

“Lo-Lo!” He cheered, upon seeing the other side. “So I had the best idea about how to do a murder better than the guy in Thomas’s script, but all these books on chemistry were blank, so I was wondering if you had anything else I could eat-“

“Get out.”

Remus blinked, posture drooping. “What was that book-nerd?”

“GET OUT!” Logan roared, lunging.

Remus slithered around his unfocused attack, vanishing with a slurp under the bed.

Logan kneeled on the carpeting, breath coming in ragged gasps.

He reached out, laying two fragments of paper side by side, willing the knowledge back into existence to reassemble the rest. However, the facts and numbers were too faded for the missing gaps to be filled in through context.

Barely a shadow of recognition remained of years of study.

Carbon atoms had four electrons. Or was that oxygen? He couldn’t- he couldn’t remember.

Logan’s knees had long gone numb from his position on the floor. He drew in a final shaky breath. Then, methodically, he began to pick up the pieces of forgotten knowledge scattered across the floor.

…

…

…

Some Wild Fanart Appeared!

[link to original](https://thereibi-art.tumblr.com/post/631472741560745984/a-scene-from-chapter-5-where-logan-gets-corrupted)

…

…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …  
> AN:  
> This chapter was like pulling teeth and piecing them into a mosaic.


	6. Chapter 6

…  
ch6  
…

Remus rolled head over ass back into his room, Logan’s roar still ringing through his ears. Usually, when another side screamed at him, Remus would scream back, even louder, with more vocal cords. 

But this was different.

Screams were a part of Remus’s games, but Remus was playing Logan’s game! And he was pretty sure that Logan’s game didn’t have any screaming in it! Well, unless he asked nicely~

He lay face down in the perpetual tide of his domain, feeling little crawley swimmers attempt to burrow into his eardrums. 

Remus was losing the game! He did not like losing this game! He wanted to win this game, and then- and then-

Stupid hands with stupid non-clawed fingers adjusting his stupid blue tie- Remus could reach, and pull it tight enough that the nerd wouldn’t be able to get another of his stupid interesting speeches out ever again- and his tongue would hang out of his mouth while he gasped for air- Remus wondered whether he could eat the words out of his mouth, and if they would taste the same as the books he ate off the shelves in Logan’s room-

With a snarl, Remus inhaled a lung full of watery slime, and lurched to the surface like a drowned sailor. He vomited up the water, bits and pieces of paper coming up with the green bile to spew across the plastic nets and fish hooks just under the water.

Lo-Lo said that Remus eating books helped Thomas, but…Remus wasn’t hungry right now. He wiped a lacy wrist across his chin, glass sequins cutting lines across his lips. The wounds burned as excess stomach acid dribbled over his tongue and past his teeth.

He *didn’t understand*! He was doing his job! Lobe-in even said his job was important, and then he- and then they-

Remus stared at the faded reflection of himself in the murky water, which rippled and doubled around the edges as he spat. 

It had been so warm. Remus never felt warm anymore, not since- 

One arm lashed out, fingers curled into a fist, smashing the china base of a garbage pile to powder. Beheaded barbies, soda bottles, and oozy candy wrappers cascaded over the back of his head.

His other hand clutched at a spot under his sash, bony talons digging into the hollow space beneath the flesh.

He wanted- he wanted- 

With a scream, Remus launched himself at the nearest tower of trash, rabid as a frothing wolverine. A plastic fish net wrapped around his throat as he tore into a rotting mass of seaweed, tightening with his every movement. When the tower fell, it pulled the net taut. The fibers of the net constricted, causing the vertebrae in his neck to snap and separate, until Remus completely lost his head.

Body left lumbering at the surface, Remus’s head thrashed as it was dragged with the rest of the junk under water. His ears wiggled like fins, before elongating into crab legs, which scuttled across the slimy floor. 

A slither at the corner of his eye, and Remus lunged, teeth first. His jaws closed around empty water. 

“Lucky~” he gurgled, bubbles cascading out of his mouth to the surface. “Come out Lucky-roo! You know I would *never* hurt you~!”

His body, sensing the disturbance in the water, shuffled over, clawed hands fishing around, till they hooked the corner of Remus’s mouth. Lifting, he slammed his head back onto the wrung skin of his neck, aligning it with a squish and a spin. 

Remus breathed, shoulders rolling like an ocean storm under a ship. His fingers twitched, still locked in their stretched out claws. Eyes wild, he crouched back down, stalking through the water like a heron after an eel. 

“Here Lucky~” Remus sang, crawling over a pile of shattered dishes and bone china. The glass and ceramics cut his palms as he scuttled, but he paid no mind. His head swiveled one way then another, and another, teeth elongating as he hunted.

“Come out, come out, come out, Lucky-loo~”

There, by the regurgitated book pieces! Remus’s hand darted out, claws extended. The tentacle flailed and struck-

With a quiet mew like a stepped on kitten, Remus drew back his hand. Four puncture wounds stabbed clear through each metacarpal of his hand, causing the palm to flop and fold over itself.

Lucky writhed a final time, showing off the hooked teeth lining its belly, before vanishing into the murky depths.

“Figures I would fight dirty against myself.” Remus licked the blood on his palm, trying to realign his bones. The injury sparked green with intent, resisting his efforts. 

Putrid water lapped against the shores of his room, pulling and mixing refuse together with each movement of the unconscious sea. Usually Remus would be captivated by the sight, maybe even pick up two tangled pieces of junk for an art project. Now, however, he focused on his own injury, fighting the tangle of his own green power.

“Stop being a bitch!” he hissed at the green light fragments. With a flare of concentrated intention- which made his vision bleed red and his stomach roil like a ship on the ocean during a calm day- the bones snapped back into place.

Remus kneaded the space between his eyes with the heel of his repaired hand. He felt the opposite of nauseous, which made him want to vomit again on principle.

Words filtered through the red haze, like a voice heard under the waves of a riptide. Teeth bared, Remus rushed to the surface, like a great white after a paddle boarder. He crested the waves of reality, crouched in the shadows behind the television in Thomas’s living room.

Remus peered through the gap between the TV stand and the DVD player. He could see the familiar outline of his brother’s kneecaps, and beyond that Jan-ass and Pat-Daddy by the blinds. Judging by the anxious shadows in the corner, Virg-in was tucked up by the stairs. The spot to Thomas’s right, near the kitchen, was empty.

Thomas himself stood in his customary spot, though the painting had been taken down, so only a blank white wall was behind him. A light on the video camera in front of him blinked to show it was recording.

“This is my fault,” Roman was saying, face hidden in the corner of his elbow. “The last character I made for you didn’t fit! I can see that now!” His arms burst out, as if he were conducting an orchestra. “Ok, try this one- Your name is Francis, you have six children at home, and you’ve fallen into a life of crime in order to feed them-”

“No, Roman, you’re fine, it’s just-” Thomas ran his fingers through his hair, causing the strands to stick up like a cow had just licked it. “I’m reading the script, and all I can think of is how I would do the murder better than the guy I’m supposed to be acting!”

“I don’t think correcting the director on his own script is a good idea, Thomas,” Patton said, fidgeting with the sleeves of his sweater.

“Yes, a better idea is to ask if he would take bribes, in the form of a science consultant. Maybe you could get a writer’s credit and an acting job out of it,” Janus chimed in, yellow gloved hands steepled together.

“Who cares about all that! We need to get this audition tape recorded in one take!” Roman riffled through the conjured script pages in his hands. “Right, let’s take it again from the top, Thomas! I’ll read through the lines with you!” 

“Oh yes, Thomas, have your lines read to you like a baby!” Remus leaned over top of the TV, causing Roman to splutter, and fumble his script. “No improvisation, no spark- just a boring read through. I’m sure that will make you stand out!”

Virgil seemed to expand, like a zeppelin about to pop at the slightest touch of a match. “What are you doing here?”

Remus sniggered, and blew a kiss. “Miss me Black Eyed Stewer?”

Virgil growled in his throat, eyes darting between the Duke, and the empty spot where Logic usually stood.

Remus leapt over the back of the TV. Roman tried to juggle the handful of papers, in addition to drawing his sword, achieving neither. Loose pages scattered to the floor, and Remus sniggered.

“Go away!” Roman shouted, arms stiff at his sides. With a snap of his fingers, the fallen pages reassembled themselves in his hands. “Can’t you see that we’re busy? Even you must appreciate the gravity of the situation at hand!”

“Oh I appreciate,” Remus said, hands on his cocked-and-ready hips. “I appreciate how your ‘gravitas’ is bringing this whole thing down!”

He leered at Thomas, who had been forcibly trying to read through the script once more, ignoring his inner monologue. 

“Come on Thomas! No more old sweater characters with boring back stories! You have five minutes on screen if you get the part! Make it memorable!” Remus threw up his hands. “You just slaughtered a man in cold blood- in an obviously inefficient way! Doesn’t that just make you want to go ape shit? Doesn’t that just make you want to kill again to get it right?”

Thomas shuddered, papers crinkling under his fingers. “But I’m not like that, I can’t-”

Remus scoffed. “Uh, it’s called acting, dumbass. Here, let me~!”

Remus charged across the space, till he was standing behind Thomas, hands placed on his shoulders. 

“There, Thomas, can’t you see it?” His hissed words sparked green between his teeth. The other sides, save Janus, were clawing at the edges of the daydream to no avail. “You just stabbed that guy, his blood is still everywhere, all over your good shoes. You have places to be, but you’ve got standards. But this guy is making you cross a line- you need to get rid of the body quick. Think of all the better ways you could be doing this, even as you dump his body in a barrel. Aren’t you just pissed that your professional mob-hitman-hench-men pride is being flushed down the drain?”

Thomas’s back straightened as the imagery took hold, face losing its customary smile for a shadowed slash of a smirk.

Remus’s fingers dug into his collarbones. “Now, read your lines!”

Thomas made it through the script in one take, words flowing from nights of memorized practice, gaining new pitch and meaning, as if he were making them up on the spot, rather than regurgitating someone else’s vision. 

The last syllable rang through the room, as Thomas stared down the camera, stinking alleyways and putrid canals permeating the senses of his mind.

Then Roman punched through the edges of Remus’s imaginings, shattering the illusion. “Now see here!” He brandished his sword, making a swipe at Remus, who jumped away from Thomas. “It’s rude to interrupt someone else’s rehearsal!”

“Ew, gross!” Patton shuddered, the weight of what mental paths Thomas just traversed grating against his sensibilities. “Ew- just- EW!”

Thomas blinked at the camera, dazed from his own performance. “I didn’t even know I could do that…” he said, softly.

Remus pouted at his brother. “Oh come on, we barely finished the scene! I know, we can get some corn syrup and red food coloring from the kitchen and-”

Janus adjusted the hem of his glove. “Remus, dear, we can listen to all your brilliant ideas at a later time. Right now Thomas needs to-”

“What do you think a body smells like when it’s dead? Is it all shit and puke, or would the blood from all the stabbings cover that up-”

“Ew ew ew ew!” Thomas chanted, pressing the heel of his palms over his ears, as if he could block out the sounds of his own thoughts.

Remus oozed closer, footsteps squelching wet spots into the carpet. “You should talk to the director, tell him how to /really/ murder a body!” He raised his morningstar invitingly. “I can give you a few pointers~”

“Remus!” Janus thundered. “That is ENOUGH!”

From his place in the corner, Janus raised his hands. The shadow behind him raised another pair, and another. Three of the arms struck out and seized the intruding side, lifting him up in the air. Remus went pliant as a kitten waiting to be dropped, mouth set.

“Oh, what’s wrong, Snake-in-My-Pants? You so loved when I gave you that little murder idea with the staircase before-”

The last word choked off, as the arms wrenched him down and out of Thomas’s reality, through the floorboards of the Side’s shared living space, and deeper still into the plumbing and sewers of Thomas’s mind.

He crashed into the swamp of his own room, where all the sewers led, but the gloves were not done. Shifting their grip, the three arms seemed to merge into one, which took up the entire field of Remus’s vision. It slammed into the center of his chest, breaking ribs, and began pushing him down through the layers of muck and garbage, as insubstantial as a meniscus of water tension.

The light faded, losing hues, as Remus continued to be forced down.

His eyes began to droop, as if anchors were stuck through the lids with rusty fishhooks covered in ancient bait guts.

Had Janus ever pushed him this far down before?

What would happen if he hit the bottom? Was there a bottom? Or would he continue to be pushed against the payne separating Thomas’s subconscious and Remus’s domain until it shattered, and- and then-

A final stream of bubbles escaped his mouth, spiraling upwards towards the memory of light. Remus felt his back hit something, and the shock rattled his skeleton near free of his sinew and skin. His limbs drifted upwards, as the pressure against his chest released him.

About time. He was getting bored of all the water rushing by his ears. It sounded like...something he didn’t have any more… 

Pressure squeezed his soft flesh as if it were trying to turn him into a diamond. The idea of shapes, even less substantial than a hallucination, sparked across his vision, like a failing match being struck to light a gasoline trail.

Maybe Logan would know what he was missing? But no…

The thought drifted like sargassum in a storm. 

No, Logan was mad at him.

Salt crystals cut against his sinuses, but it stopped when his lungs stopped trying to find air.

Maybe, when Remus floated back out of the subconscious, Logan would forget...whatever Remus did to make him mad….

Blackness pressed against his retinas.

Was this drifting tiredness what it was like to die? Remus mused, as the shape of a hand receded into the thinner darkness.

His eyes fogged over, gaining a film like a decaying corpse.

How utterly…boring…

…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …  
> A/N:  
> A short chapter, but needs must.


	7. Chapter 7

… ch 7….  
...

When Thomas edited videos, Logan held each clip to a hierarchy of style, diction, and criteria specified by the director. Usually the director was Joan, who made their delight at particular scenes evident while filming, making the subsequent editing process relatively easy. For the audition tape, Thomas had to rely only on his own measures and opinions, and a director’s note in the script he was given for the read through. And Logan could not help but continually point out the audition take which ranked highest in interest and style.

That the most dynamic read-through pitched Thomas’s voice higher than the rest, with a manic gleam in his eye and a ticking twitch at the corner of his mouth was irrelevant. Objectively, that performance best fit the director’s notes.

However, the opinions of other sides pulled Thomas’s decisions in more emotional directions.

In his living room, Thomas hunched over his kitchen counter, staring at the videos playing on his laptop. His hair flopped in disarray from all the times he had run his fingers through it. Virgil sat on the stairs, a miasma of metaphorical purple light swamping Thomas’s mind. It complimented and contrasted the red flickering sparks of Roman, who was pacing the space behind Thomas’s chair. Patton was hovering over Thomas’s shoulder, opposite Logan, biting the knuckles of his fist.

“I am literally freaking out about this guys,” Thomas said for the sixth time.

Logan exhaled vigorously, reaching to adjust his glasses. “You have ruminated on this issue for too long. I believe that utilizing a refocusing exercise, as I have previously mentioned, might help both Virgil and Roman to figuratively ‘take a chill pill’.”

Thomas nodded, thumb knuckle pressed against his teeth. “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea Logan. I have been distracted by the audition, and Joan’s been asking about that sponsor video we need in a few months…”

Logan adjusted his glasses again, feeling the indigo light of his being swirl in his chest at Thomas’s words. “Excellent. A productive distraction would prove the most useful utilization of your time.”

Thomas closed his laptop. “Right. Ok. Roman, got any ideas?”

Roman’s pacing faltered at the mention of creative endeavors, hands fisted at the small of his back. His smile was stretched thirty percent wider than normal, however the corners of his eyes remained unaffected by the expression, potentially indicating insincerity.

“Of course, how can I help you Thomas?”

Thomas pulled a battered pen and notebook from the corner of the kitchen island. “Any brainstorm ideas for that sponsored video for Joan?”

Roman bounced on his toes, as the eyes of every side fixed on him. “Right yes, let me see, um.”

“The sponsored content is not required for several weeks, so there is no rush,” Logan said.

“I know that, nerd-brain,” Roman snapped. He pursed his lips, eyes darting around the room, to avoid meeting the eyes on him. Finally, Roman let out a breath.

“I’m sorry Thomas, I appear to have-“ Here Roman struck a pose, his eyes hidden in the crook of his elbow, one hand flung to the heavens. “-Writer’s Block!”

Thomas set down his pen, and massaged the space between his eyes. “That's...not good.”

“Everything I have is just an unoriginal idea we’ve already used before. I’ve failed you!”

“Didn’t we go through this before,” Virgil groaned from his corner.

Thomas looked up at him. “Yeah, but I’m feeling pretty motivated to do something, so I don’t think it’s the same as last time…”

Logan cleared his throat. “Perhaps your predicament of ‘unoriginal ideas’ as Roman put it has a different underlying cause.”

“Perhaps,” came a silky voice, “in light of this, you should choose a less active refocusing activity.” Janus appeared, leaning against the back of the couch, gloved hands crossed demurely at the wrists.

Thomas rubbed the heel of his hands against his forehead. “Yeah, maybe you’re right…”

Janus straightened his spine, failing to entirely hide the small shimmy of his shoulders. “Of course I am.”

“How about Parks and Recs?” Patton said, bouncing on the toes of his feet.

Logan held one hand against his lips, the other crossed over his chest. When the other sides began arguing over which season to binge, he sunk out, clearly unneeded.  
...

Back in his room, Logan opened his daily planner and scanned the schedule within, before closing it with a snap. He got up from his chair and paced to the nearest line of shelves. His fingers traced over the manilla envelope full of carefully collected scraps of chemistry and mathematics, before he turned away, returning to his desk.

A dark green notebook full of typewriter neat notes caught his eye, and Logan opened the cover to scan the meticulously dated entries. His brows furrowed, and he pulled a cherry red notebook from a stack of other primary colored notes. Flicking through the entries of both books, Logan began compiling, forming patterns from the knowledge. With the hand unoccupied with turning pages, Logan pulled out a new piece of paper. He drew out columns of dates, hypotheses connecting with an ever increasing number of lines.

Finally, he let both books fall shut, and perused his conclusions.

For every instance of Roman being unable to concoct an ‘original’ idea, an instance of Remus being suppressed within the mindscape preceded it. The two events were correlated, based on this data. Logan himself had witnessed a direct cause and effect of Remus creating an idea, and that idea subsequently making its way to Roman. Combining those two observations, the source of Thomas’s creative block became evident.

Ignoring the problem had never proven beneficial for Thomas in the past. Now, with crucial deadlines with financial consequences looming on the horizon, Thomas could not afford to ignore the lack of cooperation of his own mind’s creative processes. Logan clenched his hands into fists, and relaxed them just as quickly.

Thomas needed ideas. Roman could not provide the structured narratives required, without the stream of consciousness machinations of his brother. Therefore, the most logical course of action was to retrieve Remus from wherever Janus had thrown him.  
...

Logan knocked on the metaphorical door of Janus’s room.

Though the side in question was visually projected as sitting on the corner couch cushion with Thomas, watching television, the door opened.

Janus’s eyes flicked from Logan’s face to his toes, then back again, before darting to look behind and to both sides over Logan’s shoulder. His smile widened, mimicking Patton as his most bright, no doubt in an attempt to seem genial.

“Logan, what an unexpected surprise.”

“I wish to inquire-” Logan started, but was cut off by Janus’s simpering tone.

“The hallway is no place for a conversation. Please do come in.” Janus pulled his door wider, gesturing with one yellow gloved hand.

Logan’s shoulders drew back, and he nodded. “The conversation I wish to have with you is not being impaired by our current location. However, due to your secretive nature, I suppose you would not agree with that assessment.”

The interior of Janus’s room was as inscrutable as the side himself. The idea of walls loomed too close, and the thought of a ceiling was lost in the twilight gloom too high overhead to see. A low golden glow swirled like shadows behind the wallpaper, which shimmered pyite yellow, acting as the only source of light with which to see. Logan wondered if the walls would topple if he pushed them, and what they would reveal, beyond the stuffy corner he was boxed into.

“Indubitably, Sherlock,” Janus said, closing the door behind him.

Blinking several times in quick succession, Logan turned from the blank walls to face the other side. “My name is Logan. You know this.”

“Of course I know your name Logan,” Janus said, back to the door. “Now might *I* inquire as to why you are here?”

Logan folded his hands behind his back. “I wish to know the current whereabouts of Remus.”

Janus tilted his head, mimicked smile stuttering as the corners of his eyes crinkled to a near squint, potentially conveying confusion.

“Why?” Janus’s tone fluctuated near the end of the statement, forgoing the usual upwards lilt of a question.

Logan cleared his throat, weight shifting to the balls of his feet, then back again. “I am implementing a hypothesis in order to improve Thomas’s creative productivity.”

Janus’s head tilted a full three degrees closer to his neck. The new position made his singular green eye look at Logan fully, while the diffuse lighting of the room cast the unscaled half of his face into shadow.

“You did not seem concerned about where he would go when I pushed him down,” Janus said, slitted pupil fixed on Logan. “Why do you care now?”

“I do not care, as you put it,” Logan said. “I am merely concerned for the adverse effect suppressing Remus has on Thomas.”

The seam of Janus’s lips split, exposing the shadow of teeth. “Oh dear, my mistake, however could I have mistaken care for concern. You must forgive my most grievous error.”

“It is an understandable mistake of connotations,” Logan said, magnanimous.

Janus sighed. The shadows in the room lost coherence, as the light brightened with Janus’s straightening posture. He adjusted his glove, mouth pinched at the corners. “Once again my talents are lost on another side.” Breath rushed from his lungs twenty percent faster than a regular exhale.

“I’m surprised you’re looking for Remus, even if it is for a ‘hypothesis’,” Janus crooked his gloved fingers around the word, brown eye rolling. The green eye remained unmoved.

Logan felt a line of tension spike across his shoulder muscles. “Any disagreement between Remus and myself is inconsequential to helping Thomas. I would think that you, of all sides, would know this.”

“Of course, how silly of me, I wouldn’t know anything about putting oneself first.” Janus’s tone was light, contrasting the deep shadows cast by the brim of his hat. “Though, indulge my curiosity. What could Remus have *possibly* done to make even *you* unable to, what were your words to Thomas? Oh yes,-” Janus’s voice gained the clipped cadence of Logan’s own, coiled posture pulling straight, till his shoulders aligned with the body across from him. “-’Figuratively dress him down’.”

Logan felt his body take an involuntary step back. A roar seethed behind his ears, causing his hands to curl tight into fists.

Janus recoiled into his lazy slump. “Oh, don’t get angry, Logan. You know I’m only kidding.”

“I don’t get angry,” Logan said, jaw tight. He forced his hands to relax, the roar, like a wildfire, receding. “And the status of the relationship between myself and Remus is, frankly, none of your business.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter.” Janus spread his yellow gloved hands in a shrug, green eye gleaming under the brim of his hat. “After all, I did tell you that you would get hurt.”

“Your questioning does not contribute to answering my question. Where did you put Remus when you ‘pushed him down’?”

“You are quite set on this, aren’t you?”

“Janus, I would appreciate it if you stayed on topic.”

“Spoil sport.” Janus waved a hand. “Don’t worry about Remus; he’ll float back up eventually. He always does.” Slitted eye fixed on Logan. “But right now, Thomas can’t afford to be distracted.”

“Remus is not a distraction, as you put it. He is an integral part of Thomas’s creative process.”

“He may be,” Janus said, inclining his head. “But Thomas doesn’t want that right now, and we all have to do our jobs.” The snake eye didn’t blink. “Do you understand?”

Logan’s shoulders were tense with how rigid he held his back. “Perfectly. Thank you for your time, Janus. I have other matters to attend to.” Logan marched forward, shoulders square. Janus eyes widened fractionally, and he dodged out of the way, allowing Logan access to the door.

“I do not believe this conversation is proving to be productive,” Logan said, turning the handle, revealing the brightly lit hall beyond. “Goodbye, Janus.”

“Come back soon, Logan. You know I enjoy our little talks.” Janus stood outside the rectangle of light spilling through the open door.

Logan nodded, and left the room.

Hands fisted behind his back, Logan walked down the metaphysical hall in the direction of his own residence. Though it was illogical, due to human perception in the matter being lacking, Logan could feel the gaze watching his back, as if the oily cling of yellow light still prodded at the edges of his being.

Once safely behind the closed door of his own room, Logan allowed his hands to unclench. It seemed that he would need to devise a new plan of action to recover the wayward creative side.  
...

...

Some Wild Fanart Appeared!

[Link to Original](https://thereibi-art.tumblr.com/post/635780658462064640/fanart-for-the-fanfiction-morbid-fascination-check)

...

...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …  
> AN:  
> Oh boy, this is getting slower to be written


	8. Chapter 8

…

ch8  
…

Thomas’s perceptions of his own mind, bolstered as they were by a half remembered psychology lecture, and a documentary on neurology, were still limited by the scope of his own nature and understanding. So, though Logan would prefer a map of Thomas’s to be represented by an MRI, or other more factual picture, it was instead represented by the mind palace, and its many metaphysical rooms and features.

In Thomas’s younger years, Roman had gathered Logan and Patton for a ‘Grand Adventure’ where they explored the furthest reaches of the mindscape they could go, before lunch, when Patton insisted on heading back. Logan had been assigned the role of cartographer. As with all paperwork in Thomas’s life, he had kept and improved the initial sketch of a map he had created over time.

However, that knowledge did not seem to be helping him in his search for Remus.

Logan closed the door of his room behind him, workout clothing rumpled from his jog through Thomas’s mind. As Thomas was on his sixth consecutive hour of watching television, he would not be distracted by thoughts running through his head.

Approaching his desk, Logan pulled a small notebook from his pocket, and began crossing locations off of a list pinned to the wall. The list in question was more lines than letters.

Breathing deeply, Logan laid both hands flat on the desk. So far he had scoured every corner of the shared spaces of the mindscape, from the cloudy daydreams to the white light flashes of conscious thought where the sides lost cohesion outside of Thomas himself.

Inattention caused his clothing to coalesce back into its usual polo and slacks.

There must be places Logan had not yet ventured. Just as there were spaces of his own where no other side could travel freely, logically the other sides must have their own hidden corners. Perhaps Logan should question Janus once more, and push down the false golden walls of his room to see what he would find. Such actions would surely prompt a more cooperative outcome than before. Force the metaphorical snake to tell the truth. Then, after he had shattered the last lie in Janus’s stronghold, Logan would-

A cold touch against his hand pulled Logan from his formulations. He looked down.

“Oh.” He blinked. “ Hello, Lucky.”

The tentacle brushed over his knuckles again, plucking, until Logan turned his palm up. Lucky tangled between his fingers, wiggling like a worm in the beak of a pleased sparrow.

Logan petted the tacky slime on the tentacle’s skin with his unoccupied hand. “How did you get in here? I was given to understand that you were...with...Remus.” His hands stilled.

“Lucky.” The tentacle paused its wriggling, as if it could hear his words, despite its lack of overt auditory organs. Logan swallowed, mouth dry. “Would you be able to assist me in locating Remus?”

The tentacle’s wriggling grew in frequency, until Logan loosened his grip, allowing it to disentangle itself from his fingers.

Lucky scooted to the edge of the desk, middle raising like an inchworm. Suckers allowed it sturdy purchase, even as it went over the edge and onto the floor. Once on the carpeting, it slap-slithered like an eel, vanishing under the bed.

Logan adjusted his glasses. “Ah, of course.”

The green tentacle reappeared, beckoning with a curl of its thinnest end.

“I surmise that you wish for me to follow you.”

The beckoning increased in tempo, to a flail.

“Very well.” Straightening from his hunched position over the desk, Logan lowered himself to the floor by his bed. He slid his feet into the shadows, and felt the carpeting part under his heel, like pond scum on a polluted lake. He maneuvered, until his shins, hips, and lower back had sunk under the bed. His arms strained with the effort of holding his upper body suspended over the floor.

Lucky flailed harder.

Taking a deep breath, Logan let himself fall.  
...

Thomas had once watched a documentary about underwater spelunking, where divers crawl and swim their way through flooded ground water tunnels, careful not to lose equipment, or become tangled amongst the rocks and drown horribly beneath the earth.

Logan recalled the many lost nights of sleep after watching that discovery channel episode. He supposed such a formative fear would cling to Remus, like gum on the bottom of a shoe.

The structures twisting and turning away into the twilight distance reflected those stone tunnels to an uncanny degree. However, any bottom or top to the worm carved tunnels was lost in the green gloom.

He shook his head. Best to focus on his task. Spiraling into suppositions and hypotheses could potentially draw him further into the morbid thought traps of Remus’s domain.

Such as the thought of himself drowning. Which, based on the lack of air in Logan’s immediate surroundings, had a high likelihood of becoming a reality. Or, at least, a part of what Logan perceived as his own reality.

Burning in his metaphysical lungs pulled his mind back to the present.

He needed to find oxygen. For, though Logan knew himself to be a metaphysical representation of Thomas’s thought processes, his form was that of a human being. Even fiction followed certain established laws, and disrupting the suspension of disbelief in his own existence was not an exercise Logan was willing to explore at the moment.

Though….If his metaphysical body ceased functioning so far from his own seat of power, and so close to the subconscious, would he be able to recover?

A bubble escaped Logan’s mouth and hung in place, before being tugged in several directions at once, eviscerated. Vertigo pulled Logan’s perception of direction backwards, as his body tried to swim upwards, and somehow found itself delving deeper towards the curling spires lunging out of the deep.

No. Keep calm. Oxygen.

Logan thrashed, trying to move his position suspended in the water to see more than the tunnels and gloom. Something flickered at the corner of his eye, and he lunged, fingers skating over familiar slimy skin.

Lucky wriggled over the back of his hand in greeting, swimming like an eel with ease through its element.

Black spots invaded the corners of Logan’s vision, and the sense of drifting vertigo entangled with the light headed nausea of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the blood.

With a limited understanding of sign language, Logan tried to communicate his environmental needs. However, the spinning of his vision proved to be distracting.

Another bubble escaped his lips, a thin shimmer of blue, before the green gloom swallowed it whole.

Evidence suggested Logan would meet a similar fate, in a distressingly short amount of time.

Suddenly, Lucky appeared in his field of vision. The tentacle curled over his cheek, suckers anchoring itself to Logan’s shoulder and neck, winding its width around his throat. Lucky constricted around his windpipe, and Logan bit back a yell, lest more precious air escape.

He could feel his edges sparking like the lit end of a fuse, indigo light struggling to press back against the onslaught of crushing green.

Logan clawed at the tentacle, feeling his fingers rupture into azure sparks as he lost cohesion.

Green forced its way between his pressed lips, releasing the last holdfast of air in Logan’s lungs, as he completely broke apart amid the gloom.

Then.

He existed again.

Logan opened his mouth, felt the icy water rush in- and felt it pass neatly out of his newly formed gills. Oxygen rushed back into his blood, and the light headedness and black spots receded.

Tentatively, Logan raised his hands to his neck, where three flexible stalks of tissue extended out from just below his ears and down his neck, near to the juncture of his shoulders, like a feathery Victorian collar. The stalks extended in a cloud of bloody capillaries for more than a hand span behind his head. Though Logan twisted in the water, he was unable to perform a more thorough examination. Tugging stimulated his nerve endings in an undesirable way, so he was only able to get the vaguest glimpses of teal striped skin from the corners of his eyes.

Axolotl gills, he surmised. He felt along his chest, where his decompressed lung tissues drew his diaphragm in close to his spine. Yes, his lungs were still there. Perhaps he was entirely amphibious now, despite axolotl never developing lungs.

“I’ve been turned into a newt,” he thought, half hysterical.

He felt along the front of his neck, where circular bruises still pressed into his flesh from Lucky gripping him so tightly. He could still feel it writhing its way down his throat, forcing past his barriers to permeate green light into his being, tarnishing his core *just enough* for a creative solution to take hold, like a parasite.

Teal writhed just under his skin, a corrupted barrier around his indigo core of light.

Logan looked away.

He came here for- He needed to find Remus.  
…

In addition to his new gill filaments, Logan also found his ability to move through the water made easier by a transparent webbing that had grown between his fingers. He could practically hear Remus’s guffaw at his shallow breaststroke through the gloom.

Structures reminiscent of coral reefs clung like ghosts to the corners of the twisting tunnels, bleached of all microbial life, and razor sharp. They reached out to him, like great multinuckled finger boned spiders as he drew close, nearly catching his tie before he managed to back paddle. Logan kept to the middle road from then on as he swam further into the darkness.

The light quality changed, losing its touches of yellow and green with depth, till only murky blue remained. Logan wondered when even that wavelength of light would be swallowed by the water. Green light was not able to permeate beyond a thirty meter depth of water, and even blue light could not go much beyond forty meters. However, he felt that he had been swimming for much longer than and at a greater velocity than the lack of light would indicate.

Something scuttled in the corner of his vision, like a feathery pompom. Crinoid, he thought, matching the enormous wafting net to a marine documentary Thomas had recently watched. However, this crinoid had a number of serrated teeth, in addition to the stinging frills. With a burst of speed, Logan dove, legs kicking with vigor, until the creature was gone. Along with the remainder of the light.

Breathing through the gills was disconcerting. Had Logan been in the air, his lungs would have sighed out a puff of air. Here, the tendrils on his neck wriggled against his windpipe, and a dollop of air escaped his lips. He could feel the larger bubble from his mouth crash against the bridge of his nose, and break into skittering meniscus against his skin, before being drawn upwards.

Good, Logan thought, orienting himself. He was still moving downwards.

He continued swimming through blackness, even though it felt as though he were not moving. Occasionally Logan would sigh out another bubble of air, in order to know which way the surface was by how the air bubbles moved against his skin. He became disoriented only twice, having gotten flipped around in the void and begun to swim to the surface.

Silence pressed against his ears.

*Why am I like this?*

Logan flinched, thrashing in the water.

*Why can’t I just be the way that I was before?*

The voice echoed in the void again, not one of any particular side, or even Thomas himself.

*Does anybody really love me? Does anything really matter?*

It seemed to speak with the vastness of a mob, and the intimate whisper of a reflection.

*What if I’m never happy?*

“Asking such questions is unproductive,” Logan said. His waterlogged voice vibrated farther than it would have in the air, turning his usual sedate tone into a shout.

*Question….question…..question…..* the hubbub echoed back.

Then, more quietly, more familiarly-

*Is corn a grain or a vegetable?*

Logan’s eyes strained against the sucking darkness, as if it could find the high naisally speaker.

“Corn is a grain,” Logan said, swimming to where he thought the voice originated. “The original ancestor looked similar to wheat, however centuries of selective breeding produced the corn we eat today.”

The idea of light fluttered against his eyes. Logan kicked harder, fingers pulling himself through the water.

*Why can’t I eat dog food?*

“Technically, you have the ability to,” Logan replied. The glow grew brighter, like a green planktonic filament flickering with the force of his words vibrating the water. “However, it is inadvisable, due to the crude meat and fat byproducts used in its creation.”

The greenish gloom revealed a rotting, bloated corpse of a whale, with bone boring worms and squirming, tentacled things burrowing into the layers of flaking white fat.

*Why does everyone keep leaving?* The voice echoed from the inside of the corpse, moaning as if the humpback were still alive to scream.

“Remus, I’m here.” Logan grasped the edge of a particularly large fatty hole, lined with spiked centipede-like crawling bodies with toothed circular mouths.

Muscles tensed, Logan ripped through the rotting viscera and tissue. The ends of his fingers sharpened and curled, his new keratin claws tearing a passageway easily through the decaying wall.

*Why am I so alone?* The voice was so quiet, almost lost in the muted sounds of Logan burrowing a passageway through the whale.

“Remus, you’re not alone, I’m here.” Logan spat, the cloud of rotting viscara clouding the water around his gills. “Remus, do not cease speaking until I am able to find you.”

The rattling suck of the bone worms echoed in the silence. Logan’s digging slowed, claws locked in flesh. Logan panted, tasting the decay on his tongue.

“Remus.” He cleared his throat. “Remus, did you know that humans used to think that fingernails and hair continued to grow after death? However, it was simply a body decaying and drawing back from the cuticle, which created the illusion of growth.”

Sparks of green roiled just beneath Logan’s skin.

“In the Victorian age, pewter goblets would poison their drinkers with lead, causing them to appear as if dead. The prevalence of individuals being buried alive was so high that they invented a bell to be attached to the corpse’s fingers and sit on top of the grave, to alert anyone of the body still being alive.”

The currents whooshed past his ears like blood. Then. *What if they unburied one of those bell coffins, and found a skeleton?*

Emboldened, Logan’s digging resumed. His claws brushed bone, and he worked around the whale’s massive rib. “I imagine the skeleton would still be in the midst of decomposing. Graves were rarely able to produce the dried skeletons often used in cinema.”

*What if the ghost rang the bell? If a ghost haunts its own body, does that make it a ghoul?*

His claws punctured the elastic tissue of the whale’s lungs, and Logan broke through into a massive hollow chamber. The green glow pulsed in time with the current, bright as twilight. Familiar glass sequins glinted on familiar lacy sleeves.

Pulling the rest of his body free of the whale’s tissue, Logan kicked downwards. His knees landed with an inaudible pat on the rotting floor. He took Remus’s hands between his own. The flesh hung loose, as if already detaching from its moors to break down as fertilizer for whatever came next.

“Remus,” Logan murmured. “I’m here to bring you back. Wake up.”

The other Side’s face hung lax. Were it not for the blue of his lips and the swollen tongue rotting behind his teeth, he might look to be asleep.

Kuru, Logan thought to himself. The sleeping sickness.

The inside of his being echoed with a void of light, a stark contrast to its usual concentrated cutting green.

“Remus,” Logan said again. His unoccupied hand cupped the side of the other’s face. Careful of his claws, Logan felt along the other’s neck for a pulse, before remembering that Remus did not have one even when conscious.

“Remus,” he said again, leaning close. The green light under his skin squirmed and boiled, reaching out. “Remus, please. Wake up. You are a metaphysical being. You are unable to die.”

Slimy silver strands drifted in the water; Logan ran a thumb over Remus’s forehead to brush them back.

This was not his room. Logic would not serve him in the deepest depths of creativity. But how would creativity solve this problem?

Oh.

A cascade of bubbles broke free of his lips as Logan sighed.

Of course.

Reaching into himself, Logan combed through the cobwebs of green interspersed around his indigo core. It slipped through his fingers like silk, clinging to his own spectrum like nettle stems, unwilling, unwanting to let go. Patiently, he plucked the stingers free, rolling and rolling the fragments around and between the edges of himself, until an orb of green sat on the back of his tongue.

The light roiled and coiled trying to slip back inside of his chest, splashing teal into the darkest blues of himself. It spiked against the back of his teeth, begging release.

It fizzed like ozone, a flash of mania before the gritty taste of petrichor.

Bending his face down to meet the still figure in his arms, Logan breathed light back into the corpse.  
…


	9. Logus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some swearing and strong language, so be warned.

...

They were drowning.

No they weren’t, water was their element.

Yes they were, metaphysical humans required oxygen, or at least the idea of air.

That’s boring. Logically, they should give themselves gills. 

Yes, yes, the circulatory system where blood- BLOOD!- blood contained in capillaries exchange oxygen with cold water via diffusion- Ah, but we can’t do that, we gave it back to- Yes we can, we are, we have, look, it’s easy-

They opened their eyes, first one then the other, then another and another, as if the fluorescent green freckles across their skin could wink and blink and take in the world in a whole new shade of color.

Octopi have a little understood ability to detect color via cells in their skin- If we’re an octopi, where are our tentacles- 

Eight teal appendages fanned out behind their back, plucking and poking at their surroundings. They could feel-taste the putrid decay around them, hear-feel the thrum of their own heartbeat in their ears, weighted down by miles of water.

(I haven’t had a heart since- Of course we do)

They press a hand to their chest, prodding at the freckle glowing skin experimentally. On their wrist, a watch spun in jerks and spurts, first rushing minutes past the hour, then slowing till even the seconds dragged by.

They felt sluggish and energized, as if their pulse was preparing to leap out of their chest after an infusion of monstrous caffeine just after sunrise. Caffeine doesn’t wake you up, it only increases your heart rate, which is why it is a natural insecticide developed by plants-

(The first thought inside someone’s head to get the idea to eat caffeine was like us, wasn’t it?)

See a bug keel over dead and immediately want to stick it in their mouth- We should tell Thomas to go out into the swamp and- But after researching local flora and safe foraging techniques- It could be delicious- Or it could kill us- Or we could start to hallucinate like- like-

They spread their arms out with a sweep, the lacy cuffs of their smart suit jacket fluttering against the water as they pushed and spun a hurricane of nauseating color around them. It dissipated too quickly in the darkness.

Boring, we should- I came here to- 

(What is this- I don’t feel the thing- What?- I don’t know- It was taken when I lost- Can you describe it?-)

They look up into the underside of decaying lung tissue. The thin membrane writhed with worms squiggling through layers of blubber. Whale falls are a key ecosystem feature in the deepest parts of the ocean, human hunting of whales has- Fuck humans, we should- We are human, or at least a part of one- We should tell Thomas about this and- Perhaps whale boat arson is not the best message we should send to our fans, perhaps-

(-there there there it’s gone again, I feel- Ah, I see. Is it- I don’t know I miss it I miss it-)

They shook their head again, a curtain of gills trailing from beneath their high popped collar.

They couldn’t tell Thomas anything right now, they were too deep in the subconscious. (It’s not too bad- Being accustomed to discomfort does not make it any less inexcusable.) They needed to go back up (like a champagne cork).

They grinned, a double row of teeth (twice the smiles).

(Is this a smile? I’ve never- That word how did you know?- I know- Can almost know it when you’re here- It is easier-)

Crouching low, they shoved their glasses more firmly onto their nose, and thrust one fist out ahead of themselves. Their tentacles braced against the spongy flesh of the floor, pneumatic systems coiled. Then, with an explosion of force that would have shattered the kneecaps of a less metaphorical being, they pushed off. 

Their fist smashed through the side of the whale with a popping squish, scattering blind worms and other wavy toothed things in their wake. They climbed, limbs spooling green light as it became apparent in the lightening water, using the strands to pull themselves higher and faster to the surface.

With a tsunami of a crash, and an old faithful geyser of water, they smashed up through the tidal zone of their- of Remus’s-

As they hit the ceiling of the junk patch, familiar scents of rot and moldering seaweed hit their nose, and his- their- his- core began to unwind from around itself.

They grinned, as they broke into piles of blue and green light, like the Cheshire Cat, hands pressed against their beating heart. 

(Don’t leave- I’m not- This was, I remember being- I’ve never, is it always like- Please, I- I can’t we’re-)

How lovely it was to be us, Logus thought.

And vanished.  
...

Remus drifted.

Stray thoughts flitted through the back of his awareness like flickering diatoms, as Thomas’s mind unwound around itself while watching some comedy or other. But he wasn’t himself in those shadows. He was too close to Thomas’s unconscious mind for that.

The sea echoed and rushed with distant heartbeats, like the inside of a shell. Ideas of sounds, made cavernous by the depths and distances traveled, pressed close, like cotton.

A touch.

A word too muffled, as if his ear were swollen with putrid infection.

Then.

He felt...warm.

Unbidden, his right arm reached out, fingers tangling with- sea grass? No- hair! Short strands of hair, that curled in soft waves- The left arm rose, cupping the corner of a jawline, tracing an ear, and the arm of the sensible glasses tucked behind them.

Remus opened his eyes, and Logan drew back. His lips were bleeding, where they had pricked against the fangs in Remus’s mouth. A halo of feathery gills spilled out from under the collar of his unbuttoned shirt, emitting the soft teal of bioluminescence, though that was fading as the green light pooled back into himself. A thin strand of green connected their mouths, like a glob of spit. Remus’s tongue darted over his own lips, tasting the traces of indigo sunlight still lingering there. 

He met Logan’s eyes, and smiled. “Hey there Shape of Water, what’s shakin?”

Logan’s brows furrowed. “I do not believe anything is experiencing tremors at the moment. Though, as we are in the waters of your room, I am unsure as to whether we would experience any kind of movement in a meaningful way, as an earthquake would cause the water in which we are suspended to flow and move with us in it.”

“Like broccoli suspended in jello.” Remus let his face drift closer to the other’s. “No matter how much it jiggles, the broccoli stays in place.”

The corner of Logan’s mouth quirked. Behind his ears, the gills shriveled and crumbled entirely, leaving his collar entirely unbuttoned. “Indeed. And we are the metaphorical broccoli in your simileical jelly.”

Remus looked around. Flashes of rotting rib cage and green glowing plankton flitted across the ceiling of his room, as memories only half his own crowded for purchase on the cliff face of his mind. 

“We were,” He blinked, eyes refocusing. “I was in the time-out part of Thomas. What were you doing down here Lo-Cousteau?”

“Ah, well.” Logan made to adjust a necktie which was no longer there. Remus grabbed the hand, as it fluttered, looking for something to do. Logan looked at their entwined fingers, and cleared his throat. He blinked twice in quick succession, and met Remus’s gaze. “I was looking for you.”

Remus blinked, first one eye, then the other. “Me?”

“Yes. Thomas has been experiencing ‘writer’s block’, which I deduce is a direct result of your banishment here.”

“We can’t let Thomas the Engine down,” Remus agreed, tone subdued.

Logan’s eyes darted between Remus’s own, cataloguing the crinkles of his eyelids, and the twist of his mouth. He cleared his throat again, adjusting his hold on the other’s hand.

“I also found the mindscape to be both less tolerable and stimulating without your continued presence in my company.” Their fingers slotted together.

Remus examined the choreography of his hand, fascinated. He could tear out a heart Indiana Jones style with those fingers, curled as they were. A few times he even had, just to make sure the ambiance was right. He had never been able to do it on himself though. There wasn’t anything worth ripping out, after cracking open his rib cage like a christmas turkey. Maybe Logan would let him- And they could be US again-

“Remus?”

Remus blinked, much too slowly, and refocused on Logan, who was scrutinizing him.

“If you are experiencing fatigue, I am more than willing to give you a figurative ‘jump start’ as it were.”

Remus squeezed the fingers entwined with his. “Maybe later big boy.”

The faintest of turns touched the corner of Logan’s mouth. “We are the same dimensions, as we represent the same individual, therefore I am neither big nor small compared to you.”

Salt water burned past his sinuses and down his throat as Remus sank into the tidal pools, giggling. “Sure nerd, you just keep telling yourself that.”

“In any case,” Logan said, “It would be prudent to remove you from the water so you may fully recover. Please direct me to your bed, so that you may rest.”

Logan levered himself to his feet, shoes slipping on the slimy covered skittering things under the water. He used the hand still holding Remus to bring the other Side up with him.

“Kinky,” Remus said, from where he was slumped against the other’s chest. “Usually I make a guy blow me in a back alley before taking him home, but I’ll make an exception for you.”

“That does not sound very sanitary.” Logan held Remus steady, as the other tried to navigate the jellowed joints of his legs.

“What if it gave you syphilis?” Remus said, fingers hooked into Logan’s polo. The fabric stretched, but the other didn’t seem to mind.

“Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease. You would be more likely to develope an infection.” Logan peered through the mounds of rubbish, until he saw what could imaginatively be called a bedpost.

“Cholera then!” Remus crowed. 

Logan used the arm not supporting Remus to push a pile of old newspapers to the floor, where they disintegrated upon contact with the water. He turned down the covers of the bed to be sure there was a mattress, and levered the other side onto it.

“Cholera is contracted by drinking unsanitary water.” 

“Oh neat!” Remus said, putrid water spilling from his lips. He plucked at the salt encrusted bedspread. “You know, this whole bed thing isn’t half bad, I may need to try it again in the future.”

“While I am unsure whether your lack of bones would affect your need to be wary of chiropractic injury, I would still advise not sleeping on the floor.” Logan drew the covers over Remus’s legs, and tucked them in.

“Oh, I should try sleeping on the floor, that sounds neat too!”

Logan hummed, smoothing out a last wrinkle, before straightening up. “Is there anything else you require Remus?”

The hand, which had refused to release his, tightened to near breaking, around his fingers. Wide red eyes stared up at him, and the mustache above Remus’s lips trembled. 

“Stay?” His voice was so small, and pitched high, like a seagull keening into the wind.

Logan lifted the corners of his mouth thirty degrees, and sat on the bed. “Of course.”  
...

Later, after Remus had fallen asleep, and startled awake, and fallen asleep again, Logan departed from Remus’s room. He had duties to attend to, and the other side could best recuperate if Logan was not there to disturb the eddies of green light permeating the metaphysical room. He had left a note, with paper fished out of a wine bottle and tied around Remus’s hand with a tangle of fishing wire, indicating where he had gone, and an invitation to summon him upon Remus’s waking.

Shutting the salt warped door with a click, Logan straightened his collar, and walked down the hall towards his own room. He needed a new tie, and his current clothing would need to be disposed of. 

Above he could feel Thomas stirring from where he had fallen asleep on the couch the night before, watching television. His pace quickened.

“My, what *have* you been doing, Logic?”

Logan paused, and turned his head to where a moment ago there was only blank wall.

“Hello Janus. May I ask why you have attracted my attention?”

Janus pushed himself up off the wall with a roll of his back. “Do I need a reason to talk to you?”

Logan considered this. “There is always room in a model for an anomaly, despite the predictions past data might lead one to.”

“Oh, ouch.” Janus pressed a gloved hand over his heart.

“Are you injured?” Logan cocked his head, examining the other side for what could have caused the outburst.

Janus sighed, and said under his breath, “My best material. Wasted.” Then louder, “No, I’m fine, Logan. Though I suggest you clean yourself up. Virgil has been fretting something fierce, and no doubt he won’t be able to hold himself back once Thomas has had his coffee.”

A spark of green licked the back of Logan’s tongue.

“You are quite correct, I would not want anyone to suspect what down and dirty activities I revel in when unattended. If you will excuse me.” Logan stepped around the other Side, whose mouth was hanging slightly open, and vanished inside his own room.  
...

“Guys, could you come up here please?”

Logan rose to stand in his usual spot beside the bannister. Virgil was already seated on the stairs, and appeared to have been there for quite some time, if the empty coffee pot and figited to destruction pieces of paper on the kitchen table were any indication.

Logan smoothed his tie flat against his unwrinkled shirt. “Hello Thomas, what can I help you with?”

Thomas was seated on his couch, cooling cup of coffee clutched between his hands, head drooping.

“Are you finally ready to take another take for the audition?” Roman’s enthusiasm was marred by the heavy bags beneath his eyes. “Now I don’t have anything new, but I’m sure we can try one of the characters from yesterday and-”

“Oh yes, I’m sure trying the same thing over and over while expecting a different result surely isn’t a sign of madness.” Logan shifted to see Janus appear just over his shoulder, expression bland.

“Now kiddo, let’s not be down in the dumps before we even start!” By the blinds, Patton’s eyes crinkled in a smile half a degree less wide than usual. “I’m sure that if we just have another try we can-”

“No.”

Each side turned as one to look at Thomas.

“No,” he said again, head moving from its slump, thousand yard stare peeking out through puffy eyelids. “I-” He cleared his throat. “I want to call Remus.”

The immediate uproar from three fifths of the room would have caused the neighbors to complain, were it not all in Thomas’s head.

“Quiet!” Virgil, Patton, and Roman flinched as one, and stared at Logan. He could metaphorically feel Janus’s eyes boring into his back. Logan cleared his throat, and continued in a more even tone. “None of you are listening to Thomas.”

Thomas, who has pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, shot a grateful look to Logan. “Thanks. I had the weirdest dream about eating caffeinated mushrooms in the everglades last night, and I think I’m still waking up from it.”

Logan nodded, memories of teal wirrling against the back of his throat. “Please continue with what you were saying Thomas.”

Thomas nodded. “Right. I want to call Remus.” He took a breath. “It’s not fair that we didn’t give him a shot yesterday. He was only trying to help, and- and even if I didn’t like everything we did together, I think we had *something*. And if we still don’t like working with him, then we can go back to what we were doing before….but that wasn’t working. We need something new, and Remus is if nothing else, always giving me something new.”

“Gee, Thomas, I never knew you felt that way about little old me!” Remus flung himself over the back of the couch, sequins glistening, teeth all out on display. Thomas nearly dropped his mug.

The corners of Logan’s lips rose half a degree. “Hello Remus, I trust you are doing well?” 

Red eyes flicked, piranha fast to fixate on his. Indigo met green in a crashing haze, and for a moment flickered teal, before subsiding. 

“Hey Lo-again Logan! I missed you last night~”

Logan adjusted his glasses. “I had other duties to attend to, as do you at the moment.”

Remus hummed like a blender full of spoons, lounging back over the arm of the couch. “Yeah, yeah.”

“So, Remus, are you willing to help us prepare Thomas’s character for the part?”

Remus grinned, neck bending bonelessly. “I might have a few ideas…” He rolled to his feet. “First things first, Thomas, do you remember how to make fake blood from that time Joan came over for Halloween? If not, that’s cool, we can go kill the neighbor’s dog-”

“Remus!”

“Ug, fine, we can use corn syrup-”

Logan watched the chaos unfold as Remus coaxed Thomas into the kitchen. Hot on his heels, Roman was enthusiastically brandishing a stick of eye-liner, talking about what makeup they could apply, while Virgil and Patton tried to limit the amount of gore on display.

Janus stepped beside Logan, benign smile curving the bow of his lips. 

“I see you managed to bring him back.” His voice was blandly conversational.

Logan folded his arms behind his back. “Yes. Are you planning to send him back?”

“Oh no.” Janus’s eyes crinkled, though his gaze remained unmoved. “My only purpose is to do what Thomas wants, and he does not seem to want to send Remus away at the moment.”

Logan adjusted his glasses with a hum. “Good. I would be forced to take action, were that not the case.”

The slitted pupil of his bright green eye rolled to watch Logan’s face. “My my, Logan. That was practically emotive.”

“I have no emotions.” Logan tucked his hand back behind his spine. “My purpose is to be purely logical.”

The corner of Janus’s mouth tucked upwards into the shadow of a dimple, and his eyebrow raised an eighth of a centimeter. 

“Of course you don’t.” Janus sighed, rolling his shoulders, and looking back into the fray. “Oh dear, Remus seems to have found the red food coloring-”

But Logan was already moving to Remus’s side. Taking the bottle from his chewed short fingers, Logan silenced his pouts with a finger. “If you want to make artificial blood for cosmetic purposes, we shall need more ingredients than this.”

Remus’s grin was toothy, blinding, and utterly, utterly perfect.  
…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …
> 
> FIN
> 
> It is done. At last. I feel….bereft.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N:  
> Special thanks to the lovely folks on the the telepathic joan collective discord server.
> 
> Join us, by filling out this survey to gain the first of many clues that will lead you to the discord! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PWPFHM5


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